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Oilers unfazed by injuries, rotating defence partners: ‘Business as usual’
Playoff-style hockey for the Oilers is about retrievals and a defensive awareness away from the puck. Familiarity with their defence partner will have to come as the series wears on.
SAN JOSE — Evan Bouchard, Travis Dermott, Josh Brown…
The weird thing about the Edmonton Oilers defence corps under the deployment of assistant coach Paul Coffey, is how little the defence pairs stayed the same this season. In the same game one blue-liner could take shifts beside two or three others, depending on the situation, who was hurt, or simply Coffey’s latest whim.
Darnell Nurse, Cam Dineen, John Klingberg…
The Oilers had one pair — Mattias Ekholm and Evan Bouchard — that logged nearly 1,000 five-on-five minutes together. The next pair — Brett Kulak and Ty Emberson — had 574 minutes. No other two defenceman logged 500 minutes of even strength hockey together.
Mattias Ekholm, Jake Walman, Troy Stecher, Ty Emberson…
By Game 82, the Oilers were down to starting the game with five defencemen — and two of them had spent the entire season in AHL Bakersfield. In that game, they resisted the urge to have their names hockey-taped on to the front of their helmets, the way they do in Tim Bits hockey.
And all those D-men we’ve listed here? Each and every one of them partnered at some point with Brett Kulak, the glue guy back there.
“It’s what we’ve been doing for 90 per cent of the season, so it is nice that we’re not being hit any curve balls right now,” shrugged Kulak, on a day in which the Oilers hit the practice ice with eight defenceman — with one (Ekholm) at home injured, and another (Stecher) on the trip but nowhere to be seen.
“Obviously, we’re expecting guys to be back in and we’re gonna adjust to that. But for now it’s kind of just rolling along, business as usual. A little bit like we’ve been doing the last month, six weeks.”
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The latest to return from injury was Walman, in a Good Friday practice at the San Jose Barracudas arena where the Oilers have chosen to hole up for a couple of days rather than hustling to Los Angeles only to skate at the Kings facility under the watchful eyes of their annual Round 1 enemy.
At the same practice that Walman emerged, after missing the final five games of the season to some kind of a left leg injury, Leon Draisaitl and Zach Hyman each retook their familiar spots in the Oilers top six, just days before Monday’s series opener.
The walking wounded, it seems, may just be healing up right on time.
“I don’t think we looked too wounded on the ice today,” Hyman said. “We’re good, obviously missing a big piece on the back end (Ekholm), but guys have got to pull through. Everybody’s got to step up.”
As long as the horses are in this Oilers lineup up front, scoring is never in question. But playoff time means a focus on defensive structure.
It brings a focus on everyday breakout plays, with a picked-off pass or missed assignment in April and May garnering much more attention than a similar one in November or December.
On this team — or any team, really — the focus is to defend as little as possible.
Get the puck in Connor McDavid’s hands, on Draisaitl’s tape, and let the defensive coach on the other side do the sweating. The game is about retrievals, a heads-up first pass, and defensive awareness when you don’t have the puck.
As for familiarity with a partner, well, that will have to come as the series wears on.
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“Everyone’s played with each other, whether it’s a game situation or a practice situation,” Nurse said. “You look around at the amount of games that each of us have played with a different partner, when situations arise where guys are hurt or not available for us, it seems pretty easy to fall in and play with another guy.”
These were the pairs at Friday’s practice:
Nurse-Bouchard
Kulak-Walman
Brown-Emberson
Dineen-Klingberg
There is genuine question as to whether Brown, whose foot speed is his Achilles’ heel, will be exploited by the Kings. Or if that inevitably causes him to take penalties that pave his way to the press box.
With Ekholm’s 22-plus minutes gone for the foreseeable future however, someone has to suck it up back there.
“Everyone’s going to take on a little more minutes, bigger roles,” said Kulak. “Obviously you can’t replace him — he’s one of the top D-men in the league. So, just a little bit more from everybody, and make sure you’re prepared and demand more out of yourself. Everyone’s got to elevate their game a little bit.”
Walman’s return, should his injury allow him to continue as head coach Kris Knoblauch hopes, is huge for a club that’s already missing a top pairing guy in Ekholm. A genuine second pairing D-man like Walman is going to get 20 minutes per night, likely more.
“I don’t think anybody’s hanging there their head or anything,” he said. “It’s full speed ahead — whoever is ready to go is going to play and it’s not a big deal.
“It’s hockey — everybody feels something at some point. So it’ll just be more intense.”
