Boys on the Bus

Again, here are the graphs, I’ll update as I get them generated.

Well, what can we say about this?  The Oilers tied their season worst Corsi deficit tonight against the Columbus Blue Jackets, a team that is so terrible Mark Letustu is taking a regular shift in their top 6. They allowed 19 more shots directed at their own net than they released towards their opposition’s.  Fittingly enough, they only took 19 shots themselves, meaning that the Jackets exactly doubled them up on the night.  The Oil lost every period pretty decisively, especially a ludicrous 3rd period where they were outshot 18-7.  The net effect was that Sergei BOBROVSKY only had to make 8 saves at even strength.  8. saves. Ugh.

Not one Oiler finished the night in positive digits.  The closest were Eberle and Hartikainen, both even on the evening.  The top defenceman was Ladi Smid at -2, or only -0.14 per minute.

Having epically bad nights were Hemsky and Gagner, both with -14, which translated into allowing more than one net shot against per minute of icetime.  New linemate Taylor Hall was -10, showing that perhaps this little permutation of players isn’t working.

The worst defensive pairing was by far the Schultz’, Nick at -13 and Justin at -11.  Let’s see what happened there:

The Schultz pairing got absolutely killed by Calvert, Dubinsky, and Foligno, and they did it while playing a lot with the Gagner, Hall, Hemsky line.  For whatever reason, this combination of defensive pairing and forward unit is just not working out.

Fistric actually shows pretty good here, with a greenish line until he hits Derek McKenzie, who must have figured out his secret (skating around him usually works!).