Zach Hyman’s return is welcome for the Oilers. He’s been the team’s most effective winger since the day he got here in the summer of 2021. He’s put up consecutive goal-scoring seasons of 27, 36, 54 and 27 goals.
He was also arguably the Oil’s top-performing forward in the 2025 playoffs before he went out with a fractured wrist against Dallas, a lethal blow to Edmonton’s Stanley Cup hopes last June.
He forechecks and backchecks like his NHL life depended upon it. He hits hard, puck protects like the Great Bull of Heaven, drives the net and has had good enough hands to combine well with demanding and high-skill teammates like Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl.
He’s also been the Oil’s best two-way winger since the day he arrived, regularly leading all wingers in Grade A shots plus-minus, a micro stat compiled for the last 15 years at the Cult of Hockey through video review of every Grade A shots for and against the Oilers.
Hyman’s return should provide a boost in performance on the wings, a spot where the Oilers have fallen off compared to last year. That said, even if Hyman comes back full throttle and as good as his former high-performing self, that won’t address the real issue on the Oil, the collapse of the two-way play of the team’s d-men so far this year.
So far this year, Edmonton’s centres have performed about as well as they did last year at even strength, with a slight drop-off in offensive contribution to Grade A shots but a slight improvement when it comes to making a lower rate of mistakes on Grade A shots against.
The wingers, though, have dropped from making contributions to 13.6 Grade A shots per game at even strength to 11.8 per game. Their work on defence is about the same as last year. Hyman should help address that deficit on the attack. Last year he alone chipped in one 2.9 Grade A shots per game at even strength.
But will Edmonton’s defencemen even snap out of it? Their play has fallen off a cliff this year. It’s cratering the entire team.
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The d-men are making fewer shots and passes to create Grade A shots, down from 8.9 per game last year to just 7.9 this year. They’re also making a much higher rate of mistakes on Grade A shots against, 12.8 major mistakes per game this year compared to just 11.0 per game last year as group.
Little wonder that the Oilers are mired in mediocrity.
It’s worth noting the d-men’s unfocused and lacklustre play has done little to help Edmonton’s two struggling goalies. Stuart Skinner is hanging in with an .889 save percentage, a bit down from last year, but back-up Calvin Pickard’s game is no longer up to NHL standards. He’s gone from a .900 save percentage to .830, which should force Oilers GM Stan Bowman to re-evaluation his stance on the team’s goalies and start looking at the very least for a strong back-up who can both support and challenge Skinner.
But the defence? Almost to a man they’re leaking more Grade A shots per game.
Evan Bouchard has gone from 1.7 major mistakes on Grade A shots per 15 minutes even strength last season to 2.2 per 15 this season, Darnell Nurse from 1.4 all the way down to 2.3 per 15. Mattias Ekholm is the same, 1.7 per 15 both years, with Jake Walman sliding from 1.6 to 2.4 per 15.
Ouch!
Only the bottom-pairing of Brett Kulak and Ty Emberson have improved in terms of defensive efficiency.
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All this adds up to Edmonton no longer dominating the Grade A shot counts in game, as they’ve done consistently for years now. They were +4.6 Grade A shots per game in Knoblauch’s first stint as coach in 2023-24. They were +3.2 per game last season.
This year they are dead even, creating 13.7 Grade A shots per game and giving up 13.7 Grade A shots per game.
That’s a recipe for mediocrity, not for winning.
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The solution? Edmonton can start with bringing back Paul Coffey, who coached the d-men for Knoblauch the past two years, at least if Coffey’s open to returning.
I glean from all the insider talk that Coffey’s got a big personality and that maybe he and Knoblauch didn’t always see eye-to-eye. But perhaps that kind of disagreement and tension produced solid results for the d-men.
I can’t say for sure Coffey’s hypothetical return would fix things. But I can say the performance of the d-men shot up when Coffey first got here and has now dropped in catastrophic fashion.
Perhaps that is coincidence. Maybe it’s correlation but not causation.
If there are other explanations for Edmonton’s d-men suddenly playing so poorly I’m open to them. But what are they?
At the Cult of Hockey
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