Have the Edmonton Oilers really had 7.52 billion forward line combinations so far this regular season?
No, it only feels that way.
In fact, as many of you aware now due to a clever Sportsnet hockey graphic broadcast at the start of Thursday night’s Oilers-Habs game, Edmonton has used 21 different line combinations to start games this year.
line dombos
Of course, Edmonton’s line combos for the Montreal game didn’t last past the second period, and Oilers coach Kris Knoblauch has now said he’ll go with the line combos he used for the third period of the Montreal game in Edmonton’s next match on Saturday against the Kraken of Seattle.
Those new line combos are:
Howard – McDavid – Mangiapane
Savoie – Draisaitl – Podkolzin
Henrique – RNH – Roslovic
Tomasek – Ohilp – Frederic
Perhaps having tried all possible combinations and permutations of his players, this was the last group of lines for Knoblauch to assess.
With so much variation in Edmonton’s lines so far this year, I wondered which of the lines had spent the most time together and which had had the most success (a more difficult matter to measure).
Most used: Howard, Henrique, Tomasek
So far, Knoblauch has most utilized the line combinations of Ike Howard, Adam Henrique and David Tomasek, playing them 29.4 minutes together and Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl and Trent Frederic, as well as McDavid, Draisaitl and Andrew Mangiapane, both lines seeing 24.6 minutes together.
The only other line 20-minutes together or above has been the Jack Roslovic, Andrew Mangiapane and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins line, 20 minutes on the nose.
To rank the lines for performance, I gave equal weight to each lines’ Shots For%, Goals For% and Expected Goals For%. It’s not a perfect way to rank them, but the data is readily available on Natural Stat Trick, and I attach some weight to it, though the sample sizes here are exceedingly small.
Best line: McD, Drai, Frederic
By this ranking, the top line has been Tomasek, Curtis Lazar and Adam Henrqiue, who scored one goal on one shot in five minutes of play. Ok, that is a laughably small sample size.
So the real best line has been the McDavid, Draisaitl and Frederic trio, which didn’t score or get scored on, but outshot opponents 19 to six. Perhaps if they had scored a goal or two they would still be together now.
The third best line is one that Knoblauch found at the end of the Montreal game, Howard, McDavid and Mangiapane, who in 4.4 minutes together outshot opponents 2-1, with a couple solid chances for. It’s not a lot of evidence of excellence but it was good enough for Knoblauch to say he’ll be sticking with these new lines.
Why not? He’s tried everything else.
lines
What to make of all these line changes?
Obviously Knoblauch has yet to see any one line he’s convinced works together.
One theory of coaching is that you should stick with lines so the players get familiar and have time to work out issues in how best to play with one another. But in the modern NHL, it’s far more common to see coaches go to the blender constantly in an effort to maximum forward line productivity.
I’m not sure which plan is best, but I’ll suggest Knoblauch is on the extreme end of the blender approach so far this year.
Perhaps things will settle down soon. The fact is that not one Oilers line has done that well so far. Not a single one. They’ve all struggled in one way or another. Not one line has scored more than a single goal together at even strength this year.
It likely had to do with the Oilers missing Zach Hyman just now and the team breaking in seven new forwards to the group. That’s a massive amount of change.
But all a line has to go is scored a few goals and not get scored on and I’ll suspect Knoblauch will stick with that line to ends of time, or at least for the next three or four games, whichever comes first.
At the Cult of Hockey
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