The Oilers' Star Power Wasn't Enough

In the end, Vegas' ensemble cast outdueled Edmonton's big names.

For those who stayed up late enough and/or found the right channel to watch, Sunday night’s Game 6 between the Vegas Golden Knights and Edmonton Oilers was either a celebration of top-to-bottom team play or an exercise in frustration for those hoping to see special superstars shine. Despite all the top-end talent on Edmonton’s side, Vegas was able to survive a first-period counterpunch and then stifle the Oilers as their season slipped away.

It was the kind of thing that might make you reassess how far a superstar (or two) can carry an NHL team — regardless of how historically excellent those superstars are.

Before the playoffs, I thought the Oilers had a very good chance to make the Stanley Cup Final out of the Western Conference. In part, that was because this was far and away Edmonton’s best regular-season team of the Connor McDavid Era, whether we looked at goal differential or Elo ratings. But it was also because of how the playoff bracket shook out. While a lot of pundits were high on the L.A. Kings, Edmonton’s first-round foes, the Oilers had the vastly superior goal differential during the regular season, and the talented trump-card of McDavid and Leon Draisaitl. Then, in the second round, there was the possibility of facing Vegas — a team I thought was a lot more mediocre than its record indicated.

The basis for my thinking was that, while Vegas didn’t have any glaring weaknesses, it also didn’t really have any major strengths. The only category of Goals Above Replacement in which the Knights did not rank between 12th and 16th during the regular season was goaltending — and injuries had thrown that department into flux on the eve of the playoffs. (Not that playoff goaltending is very reliable to begin with.)

Another interesting tidbit to quote from the playoff preview I co-wrote with

Terrence Doyle

at FiveThirtyEight regarded Vegas’ curious combination of great depth but no true star-level performances:

They have […] virtually no standout individual performers despite rolling out such recognizable names as Jack Eichel, Alex Pietrangelo, Shea Theodore and Phil Kessel. Zero Knights accumulated even 15 GAR this season, making Vegas the only playoff team to feature such a dearth of productive stars. Perhaps that speaks to the machine-like quality of a roster where no single cog is more important than another, but no team since the 1966-67 Maple Leafs has won the Cup after a regular season where its best player had fewer than 15 GAR per 82 team games. 

One factor that nugget was unable to account for was that Mark Stone, who played just 43 games (compiling 7.8 GAR) during the regular season, was activated off long-term injured reserve for the playoffs. Stone is currently second on the Golden Knights in postseason scoring, with 12 points in 11 games.

But as always in hockey, there was also just no accounting for who might exceed their form in the playoffs.

Eichel is up to 1.27 points per game this postseason, after averaging 0.99 during the regular season — and he nearly matched McDavid on scoring (9 points to 10) during their second-round series. Jonathan Marchessault, a solid but far from star-level player, outscored every Oiler except McDavid with his 8 points, including a second-period hat trick in the clincher. Goalie Adin Hill, called upon in relief of the injured Laurent Brossoit (who himself was a backup-turned-starter… yes, it’s complicated) had a .934 save percentage in the series and stopped 38 of 40 Edmonton attempts during the finale.

And on the other side, the Oilers could not sustain their typically dominant offensive output for enough of the series to offset their typical defensive flaws. It’s easy to blame netminder Stuart Skinner, who allowed a goal 24 seconds into the must-win Game 6, was eventually yanked for the third time in four games after allowing Vegas’ fourth goal, and had an abysmal .875 SV% in the series. But the Oilers also scored just one goal in the second and third periods of Games 5 and 6 combined, with Draisaitl going from potentially challenging the all-time NHL record for goals in a single postseason to being held to 0 goals and 1 assist over the last four games of Edmonton’s season. McDavid tried to carry the load, with three goals across Games 5-6, but he couldn’t do it by himself.

And maybe that’s the lesson of this series, and these playoffs as a whole so far. I’ll reprint this chart from my recent story about the failures of the Toronto Maple Leafs’ core to contend for a Cup despite its statistical success during the regular season, because somehow the Oilers’ current core is even more disappointing through the lens of individual GAR not translating to postseason success:

Does this mean McDavid should pull a Kevin Durant and leave Edmonton for a stronger team? I don’t really think hockey works that way (and besides, KD’s ring-chasing hasn’t always worked out too great either). But it is a testament to how a superstar or two isn’t a sufficient condition for winning a Stanley Cup. And based on Vegas’ roster construction by contrast, it might not even be a necessary condition.

Filed under: NHL