After a dispiriting home stand, Edmonton Oilers take their show on the road tonight for the first time this 2024-25 NHL season. The Oil convincingly lost their first three games in regulation, and were on the verge of dropping the fourth against Philadelphia before their big guns delivered the late tying goal followed by the overtime winner to salvage two points from the four-game set. Which isn’t great, but still beats the heck out of the alternative that was staring them in the face at the last TV timeout on Tuesday
That late comeback, featuring some gritty team play to overcome 2-0 and 3-2 deficits, broke the goose egg in the W column and provided something to build on. The next step comes tonight in Nashville, where the Oil will meet the Predators at 6pm MDT.
One of the big questions facing Edmonton’s coaching staff remains the deployment of the defensive corps, and specifically who among the various six-figure candidates will step up to play alongside Darnell Nurse in the second pairing.
How it started
Let’s go back to the first day of training camp, when I wrote this post describing its most important battle, specifically, who would replace the traded Cody Ceci at 2RD. Not just Ceci, but two other options who played for stretches on Nurse’s right side during the long playoff run, namely Vincent Desharnais and Philip Broberg. Both departed over the summer as free agents. Yet a fourth playoff partner, Brett Kulak, remains in Edmonton, but is back on the left side in the third pairing after struggling on his off side.
Leading to this scenario, described in the linked article:
- What we know for sure is that the four returnees can be written in pen, with Mattias Ekholm, Darnell Nurse, and Brett Kulak continuing to lock down the left side and Evan Bouchard the top righty without a throw.
So far, the coaching staff has stuck to that template, with Ekholm-Bouchard the undisputed first pairing, Nurse-Player X on the second, and Kulak-Player Y on the third. With one of the candidates mentioned in the original post, Joshua Brown, having been optioned to Bakersfield, the identities of X and Y have rotated among three other newcomers, Ty Emberson, Travis Dermott, and Troy Stecher,
Typically such rotations happen on the third pairing, with the d-men ranking 5-6-7 on the depth chart sliding in and out of the line-up. But in Edmonton, that rotation has become a somewhat unusual 4-6-7, with Kulak locked into the #5 role.
How it’s going
This table breaks down the ice time logged by each rearguard during the four games to date, listed in order of average ice time. The first pairing (orange background) has remained constant, while the second (yellow) and third pairs (green) along with the press box slot (grey) have changed on a nightly basis.
The numbers themselves tell us that coaches Kris Knoblauch and Paul Coffey have been increasingly reliant on a Big Three of Bouchard, Ekholm and Nurse, with all of them north of 20 minutes per game. Ceci used to be the fourth guy at that level, but in his absence the other alternatives have been logging in the 15-17 minute range, consistent with their past history in each case.
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