The Edmonton Oilers discovered their Missing Link against the Vegas Golden Knights — and it made all the difference in the team coming together to beat VGK in the final two games of the series, both Edmonton shutouts.
Much has been made of coach Kris Knoblauch putting together a solid checking line to faceoff against the Jack Eichel trio, and while that move was big, even bigger was the insertion of Troy Stecher into the line-up to replace little-used d-man Ty Emberson.
It’s something of a mystery why it took so long for Oilers d-man coach Paul Coffey to switch out Emberson for Stecher. Emberson had had a solid start to the 2024-25 season, with his strongest stretch of play in December thru January. But Stecher had out-played Emberson by a wide margin in the final three months of the season.
If you’re into hockey stats, you can see these fluctuations and trends in performance in the Cult of Hockey’s highly-granular video review of Grade A shots at even strength. Emberson started strong for a d-man, -0.37 Grade A shots per game (a good number for a d-man) from October through January. But he finished up weak, -1.06 per game (a poor number for a d-man) from February to April.
Meanwhile Stecher trended up from -0.65 per game to -0.46 per game, from a bit below average to a bit above average.
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Stecher was coming off an ankle injury and surgery that had kept him out of the 2024 playoffs. He was slow to heal up over the summer. He started slow this regular season but as his speed and agility took off, he became a solid option, often pairing up with Nurse. For his part, as the season went along Emberson became increasingly uncertain with the puck and less physical on defence. This downward trend continued into the playoffs with the increased pace of the games.
Enter Stecher in Game Four against Vegas. The Oilers had been leaking a high number of Grade A shots against in the first round against Los Angeles, and did so again in Games 2 and 3 against Vegas, giving up 21 Grade As in Game 2 and 16 in Game 3. If that trend continued, the Oilers were in trouble.
But Stecher stepped up big time, moving the puck sharply, defending courageously, helping to settle down the suddenly erratic Darnell Nurse, and bringing coherence, stability and three solid sets of d-man duos to the Oilers line-up for the first time in the still young 2025 playoffs.
The Oilers went from giving up 37 Grade A shots in Games 2 and 3 to just 26 Grade A shots in Games 4 and 5, a massive reduction.
Even more important when it comes to the most dangerous of all shots, 5-alarmers that go in about 33 per cent of the time on average, they went from giving up a total of 20 in Games 2 and 3 to just six in total in Games 4 and 5. Little wonder they smothered to death VGK’s playoffs hopes.
Coffey trusted Stecher enough to play him 15:45 at even strength per game in the veteran d-man’s first two games back. That’s more than twice as much as he was playing Emberson at even strength, just 7:31 in the first nine games of the playoffs.
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Emberson was struggling to quickly and efficiently make break-out passes. Stecher has excelled at this same task, blasting back into his own zone to retrieve pucks and quickly and accurately moving them out of the Oil’s end. This has helped free up Nurse to play a more aggressive game.
Nurse had struggled on a pairing with Evan Bouchard in the first nine games of the playoffs. I’m not sure why but both of them were making a few too many bad reads, as if neither was sure of his partner, both trying to do too much at some times, but doing too little at others.
It’s a good thing then that Nurse and Stecher meshed against Vegas, but it’s no surprise. They had played together 474 even strength minutes in the regular season, with the team scoring 19 goals and giving up just 16. Their pairing worked then, which only adds to that mystery of why it took Edmonton so long to go back to Stecher in the playoffs.
He had been injured late in the year against Winnipeg, but was physically ready to play by Game Four against Los Angeles. But the Oilers were had just won a huge victory in Game Three against the Kings. And they kept winning, even as Emberson and Nurrse struggled.
Perhaps the Oil stuck with the same line-up out of fear of upsetting a winning line-up formula. Maybe Coffey was hesitant to mess with success, even as it was increasingly clear that something was amiss with the defence, and that constantly juggling the pairings at even strength was a big part of the problem.
Two ideas come to mind with Stecher’s strong run of play.
First, that if he had been healthy last season for the 2024 playoff run it might have made a huge difference for the Oilers. Nurse had his worst playoff season, struggling until the Final when he was teamed up with Philip Broberg. But if Stecher had been there, maybe Nurse’s game would have come around sooner. And maybe Broberg would not have caught the eye of the St. Louis Blues.
Second, now that the Oilers have three solid defensive pairs — Kulak/Bouchard, Walman/Klingberg, Nurse/Stecher — there’s not nearly so much of a push to rush Mattias Ekholm back into the line-up. This is excellent news for the Oilers.
I’ve noticed that when players come back too soon and when players try to fight through major injuries, their performance is often below average-to-wretched. Nurse, who was banged up in the playoffs in 2024, is a prime example of that.
The Oilers don’t need an injured Ekholm who struggles to make plays. That’s the Ekholm we saw when he tried to play through sickness and injury in the final months of the season. But if Ekholm can get healthy enough to play as he did at the start of this 2024-25 season, he can help Edmonton win a Stanley Cup. The Oilers now have the luxury of not rushing, of making sure Ekholm is good to go before he steps in.
At the Cult of Hockey
STAPLES: Edmonton’s decision to pass on Broberg/Holloway looking so much better just now
LEAVINS: Dare to dream of Ekholm’s return
‘Full credit’: Edmonton Oilers coach rightly gets high praise for solving 3 big issues to advance