As was the case during their dynasty years, the Edmonton Oilers are once again known as an offensive powerhouse. Back in the day, there was a Big Five that looked after the lion’s share of the scoring, namely forwards Wayne Gretzky, Jari Kurri, Mark Messier, Glenn Anderson and rushing rearguard Paul Coffey. That quintet could be counted on to light the lamp on a consistent basis, though from time to time the club would get some key contributions from the supporting cast.
There are a few superficial similarities between the make-up of those powerhouse squads of yore and the Edmonton Oilers of the here and now. Not least, that there is a core group of 5 players — again 4 forwards, 1 defenceman — who deliver a large percentage of the mail.
These days that core offensive crew is readily identifiable as the first powerplay unit. Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl, Zach Hyman, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Evan Bouchard currently form the best PP in the game Because of that powerplay connection let’s call them the Power 5, even as all 5 also rack up plenty of goals and points at even strength.. For this post we will consider their output in goals alone, in all situations.
Our background data set starts in 2021-22, when Hyman arrived via free agency and Bouchard made the club as a full-time player. In the three seasons since, the Oilers have been the top offensive club in the league; their 902 regular season goals and 184 playoff tallies both rank first in raw totals, while their near-identical per-game averages of 3.67 and 3.68 rank first and second respectively.
In each season and each playoff season, we see that the Power 5 delivered over half of the club’s goals. That crested at well over 60% in 2022-23 when the powerplay reached peak performance. It was a bit more balanced in 2021-22, when mid-season signing Evander Kane had a hot roll in the second half and in the playoffs while RNH had a down year on the goal-scoring front and Bouchard was finding his way.
In the season just past and the playoffs ongoing, the Power 5 has seen its production drop a tad though still in the range of 2 goals per game, all season long. The supporting cast, meanwhile, continued to deliver about 1.5 goals per game, led in-season by Kane (24 goals) and Warren Foegele (20) along with defenders Mattias Ekholm (11) and Darnell Nurse (10). The production of each came almost entirely at even strength, as indeed does almost all of the club’s support scoring.
What we see in the above broad brush look is that scoring distribution between the two identified groups has not changed a whole lot between season and postseason, be it parsed by goals per game, percentage of team goals, etc. Except… it sure has changed in the Stanley Cup Finals.
