Everything seems to be breaking favorably for the National Hockey League this postseason. It won’t be hard to find a marketing headline for this year’s Western Conference Finals. The best player in the world against the best team in the world? Yes, sign up for all of us.
The Edmonton Oilers, after working through the first two rounds of the playoffs, face a new challenge with the Colorado Avalanche.
The Avs may have the deepest depth chart in the league, but they also have an impressive collection of superstars at the top of the lineup. That’s what sets them apart from the two teams the Oilers have sent so far this postseason. Connor McDavid’s line that was nuclear against the top six in Los Angeles and Calgary was not surprising. Against Colorado? It is certainly a bigger challenge.
The Avalanche will not be confused with a blocking defensive team, but this type of defensive strategy, which was, to some extent, deployed by the Kings in round 1, has rarely worked against a player with McDavid skills. . Rather, the Avalanche prefers to skate teams on the ground, with the dazzling speed of Nathan MacKinnon and the magic of Cale Makar’s discus movement coming together to create an offensive giant.
To put that in perspective, consider the Oilers ’scoring rates with McDavid and the best Darnell Nurse defender on the ice over the past three seasons compared to that of their Colorado enemies. It is true that the Oilers have seen some defensive weakness with their first group (McDavid line + pair of nurses) on the ice over the years, but they remain comfortably ahead of their opponents (+0.7 goals each 60 minutes with equal strength).
Now compare it to what Colorado has seen with MacKinnon and Makar deployed:
Like I said, a different challenge. A fundamentally different challenge.
We know the individual and team-level measurements of Colorado are impressive; That’s life when you’ve beaten 741 to 554 (+187) teams in the last three seasons. But it’s not just because Colorado has a deeper team, whose depth players can beat the weaker teams in the league. We know this because for every 60 minutes MacKinnon and Makar play, they are almost two goals better than their opponents. That’s almost three times the McDavid and Nurse domain rate!
So yeah, Colorado is so good. But I’m also interested in face-to-face confrontation.
My argument for choosing Edmonton to win the Western Conference is based on two arguments: that neither of Edmonton’s top two opponents would have an answer for McDavid’s line (that was at least as planned) and that a Colorado materially better. The team would have a hard time playing out of sync, in large part because their best players would look in a mirror in this series. That is, having to deal with groups of staff that can threaten them in a way that few teams in the league can do. (Vegas’ elite possession game baffled Avalanche’s attack just a year ago.)
Why do I think this is plausible? Part of the reason is that Colorado, despite being a great team, has not had much of a response for McDavid.
I was curious to know how this McDavid number relates to what we have seen against other opponents. If we subgroup this group into common opponents (mostly Western Conference teams) for the sample size, we see that while Colorado was the best team in the NHL, they were one of the weakest in stopping the Edmonton’s Largest Weapon:
Here’s the way for Edmonton to get a big upset, and it would be a big upset. No matter how much you think about the Oilers ’top lineup, and I doubt you’ll find more optimistic people than me in this group, the margins that the Avalanche can unite over the course of a game or series are sometimes hard to believe.
The Colorado first-round series against the Nashville Predators looked like men against young children. And for all we can say about the problems Avalanche may have with McDavid, this doesn’t even begin to explore the utterly futile attempts we should see from Edmonton’s second and third pairings (day, even all first) to try to stop Colorado. .
The series should be electric. The only question left: can the big guns of Edmonton be an equalizing force against a Colorado giant, or is this Avs team just too good now to put it aside?
We started receiving an answer to this question on Tuesday night.
Data via Natural Stat Trick, NHL.com, Evolving Hockey