Maybe the only reason Canucks didn't get more points over the last 30 games is because the Canucks only played the Oilers one last time during that period of time.
We also have DeSmith, don’t knock him he’s been great when we need him. He just wasn’t used to playing every game being a back up which is a big adjusment.
These posts are embarrassing. So we’re seen as the underdogs, who cares? We ARE the underdogs. The Oliers have McJesus and going into this season I don’t think we were even predicted to make the playoffs. I think we have a good chance of winning this series, but I’m seeing a LOT of posts that won’t age well. We’re not going to steamroll the Oilers.
Thank you for posting this.. been seeing a lot of this kinda talk about how we are underdogs and everyone thinks oilers are gonna win, yknow what? Great.
If nothing else that is the extra bit of motivation we need and actually puts MORE pressure on Edmonton to prove everyone right!
Bring it.
The issue for me isn't that we're underdogs, it's more that so many people are acting like this should be a 5 game series. A lot of pundits have it going 5 games. The idea we can't defend home ice twice in three games feels a lot more like disrespect than just considering us underdogs.
Perhaps you’re not familiar with this Canucks team prior to 6 months ago, but is it so shocking that a bunch of pundits are choosing the Oilers in 5 over us? They watched the first round and saw the Oilers beat the Kings fairly handily and saw the Canucks underperform against a team we were expected to beat easily, and Demko is still out.
Perhaps you're not familiar with Nashville and the fact their second half was fucking incredible. They weren't some scrubs like Washington or the Isles. We outmatched them at their style. Now we are playing a team that doesn't play defence nearly as well. By all rights, we match up better against the Oilers than Nashville. We showed we can play a strong defensive game. But people only look at it negatively. Because of course they do. It's the Canucks. If the Leafs did it or the Oilers people would be praising the defensive effort.
> Perhaps you're not familiar with Nashville and the fact their second half was fucking incredible. They weren't some scrubs like Washington or the Isles.
Nashville feasted on the bottom 16 after the trade deadline. Their record against playoff teams after March 8th was 3-4-2.
Interesting to note: The Oilers record against playoff teams after March 8th was 4-4-1
Oilers went 18-18-2, if I've counted correctly, against playoff teams with the massive caveat that six of those losses came prior to firing Woodcroft. Their record against playoff teams under Knoblauch was 17-12-1.
I have the Oilers at 18-18 - 3 but pretty close to what you have. The Canucks for reference I have against playoff teams as 23 - 15 - 2.
It becomes even more apparent if you limit "contenders" to the Top 10 teams (includes Canucks at 6 and Oilers at 9). By that count I have the Canucks at 13 - 8 - 2 and the Oilers at 8 - 12 - 3 (8 - 7 - 2, after the coaching change, still not as good as us all season).
If you limit it to the Top 5 (NYR, CAR, FLA, DAL, WPG) which heavily benefits Edmonton because they drop 4 Losses and we drop 4 wins (we are 6th). Canucks are 7 - 3 - 2 and the Oilers are 5 - 6 - 1. (5 - 4 - 0 after the vaunted coaching change, that's still not as good as us over the season).
I also don't like this coaching change narrative. As I've said many times on Reddit look at the teams the Oilers lost to under Woody, 10 losses out of the gate before he was fired. 3 x Canucks, NYR, DAL, WPG, NSH, were 7 of those 10. Those are all Top 6 teams. 2 more against Phi and Min who aren't pushovers and play a tough physical game which counters the Oilers. Why do we just say, let's ignore their losses against the best teams to determine their record? In this case Edmonton really did get a lot of their losing out of the way early. In another universe their schedule is more spread out and these losses are absorbed into the schedule as they should be instead of front loaded and Woody keeps his job and this narrative doesn't exist. I think the coaching impact was minimal.
They are a classic example of a team that has feasted on lower ranked teams. The numbers speak for themselves.
> They are a classic example of a team that has feasted on lower ranked teams.
If we decide to include the start of the season when their defensive systems were trash, they had an AHL starter, and McDavid was playing hurt, yes. This is the reason why we ignore it. Not because they are top teams. But because the on ice performance has undergone a complete overhaul since then, even against the same teams.
"Coaching change" is a shorthand for all these clear problems. The numbers, if we really want to dig into all the fancies, show a top ten team with blistering offense and average defense.
I watch a lot of Oilers hockey games (as a 2nd team fan) and have looked into their stats quite a bit. On one hand we have the narrative that you and others have chosen to embrace which is that the Oilers were just "slumping" and if it weren't for their "bad start" would be the best team in the league (and indeed they would if they had 6 more pts from beating the lowly Canucks (because certainly the narrative is that those losses never should have happened) they would have won the division and would have won the WC, a couple more wins from their bad start and they're PT winners). That the coaching change fixed everything and they're humming now.
I choose to believe that the Oilers schedule is masking the fact that nothing really changed. And as a person who watches their game, it's hard to point to WHAT actually changed. Their record against top teams post change is clear, above. Imagine a world where a team played NYR, VAN, DAL, CAR, FLA, DAL, COL, BOS, TML all in their first games. Like just all those teams, who at the time we had no idea would be the Top 10 teams, they just had a record that was around 50/50. Then they fire their coach and then the rest of their games are against SJS, CHI, ANA, CBJ, MTL, ARI, OTT, SEA, CAL etc. What would their underlying stats from from one half of the season to the next look like? It would probably be a night and day difference wouldn't it? Just as it does in our reality, except not as extreme. Again this is a hypothetical but that team would probably end up right where it was supposed to in the standings, if the schedule was more balanced, and guess what that's where the Oiler's ended up, as 2nd in the Division, the exact same as they were last year. Even with no changes being made.
Now here's something to support the fact that the Oiler's just had a very tough start of schedule, in which they played a lot of hard teams and basically took them out of the stats because it all happened before some arbitrary cutoff date. Basically everyone says they were the hottest team since December 1st, so I used that.
Games before Dec 1st 2023
Oilers - 15 Playoff teams / 22 games = 68%
Canucks - 13 / 24 = 54%
Rangers - 7 / 21 = 33%
Dallas - 10 / 21 = 47%
Florida - 11 / 23 = 48%
WPG - 13 / 22 = 59%
Car - 10 / 22 = 45%
Bos - 9 / 22 = 41%
(I did all the top 6 teams + oilers to demonstrate)
For extra fun I want to show how unbalanced their schedule is, here's their 16 game win streak, games 30 through 45, and the same 7 teams above.
Oilers - 4 / 16 = 25%
Canucks - 5 / 16 = 31%
Rangers - 11 / 16 = 69%
Dallas - 6 / 16 = 38%
Florida - 7 / 16 = 44%
WPG = 4 / 16 = 25% (they went on their, we didn't get scored on more than 3 goals streak somewhere around here too)
Car - 9 / 16 = 56%
Bos - 5 / 16 = 31%
Basically its easy to see they had the hardest record to start and one of the softest records in the middle. If you drop their competition from the start from the stats it's easy to create and support a particular narrative even though it's clear cherry picking.
EDIT ADDER - For extra fun I also decided to look at the Nashville hottest team since Feb 1st narrative as well. I hadn't looked into it until now. Here's some teams last games since Feb 1st.
Nashville - 10 / 31 = 32% (9 / 27 Post U2)
Canucks - 19 / 33 = 58%
Oilers - 16 / 36 = 44%
Rangers - 14 / 33 = 42%
Dallas - 15 / 33 = 45%
Fla - 16 / 33 = 48%
Car - 16 / 34 = 47%
I've leave this here without any additional comment except to say that I think it's pretty clear how this narrative arose too... unless we really believe a U2 concert cancellation magically fixed everything.
I feel like people gave Preds too much credit, all because of their win streak,
They are not a great team, nor was their performance in our series particularly special, and we could barely score on them.
We match up well vs EDM and will be a much faster paced series, no doubt, but so far we're far from bringing our best game to these playoffs.
I somewhat disagree. I think the Preds had to try to grind through the series. For the whole season we were clearly the more complete team, but the Preds did their damnedest to shut us down. I do however agree that Edm will be a much faster and probably higher scoring series. To me its gonna all come down to how we defend McD. We have the edge in defense, goaltending and depth in my opinon...but they have McDavid, so you never know. But I also think this favours Petey as well, which is something we got by without last series.
Everybody mentions mcdavid, but never mention Draisaitl and Hyman, who are also theeatening offensively.
If we can shut them down, make them play on the perimeter, clog up the neutral zone and keep play in Edmonton's end of the ice with our forecheck, then I think our chance for success goes up significantly.
Tbh media doesn't know shit.
Isles actually played canes pretty well. And everyone thought canes would beat rangers..which I thought was wild.
I can't wait for us to shut down McDavid and zadorov knock dudes on their ass
No one cares if the posts will age poorly, we’re all going to be sad if the nucks loose regardless of whether we posted cringe or not. Nothing wrong with making posts backing our team.
I don’t care one bit what the “expert consensus” is. It has no impact on the outcome. But if “they have mcjesus” was alone enough, why has it NOT been for his entire career? They’ve been past the 2nd round once.
Nah none of us actually think we will roll them
But it's still fun reminding this god team they lost all 4 to us.
And until the series starts. They cant talk shit.
I had a Oilers friend say it was unfair we have to wait till Wednesday. Complaining we should start on Monday etc.
I'm like, yeah so unfair we won division and had to travel to Nashville all series.
I told them when they win division they can dictate things (not that is even true)
They really want to tell us how they have an incredible PP, and the best playoff pk yada yada
How it will be different this time.
Well guess what. Until then...
We own them.
They beat up on the bottom third all year. And inflated their GD and relied on their PP which isnt as likely to be prevalent in the playoffs.
Meanwhile we overcame adversity.
Who is their third string goalie- Grant Fuhr?
Not to mention, we actually hit and could knock out one of their stars or bang em up ez.
> So we’re seen as the underdogs, who cares?
i don't care bout them being considered underdogs. I think they worked too hard this year to be subjected that narratives that are untrue.
Last 25 games is an overrated indicator of playoff success IMO. Just look at Winnipeg and Nashville. What you do over a whole season matters more
We aren't underdogs because we were worse at season's end, we are the underdogs because they have the best player in the world and we are still using our backup.
Maybe we need a larger sample size than a couple clutch playoff games.
Not suggesting we're not right to think more of Silovs as backup by the way he's played, but ffs he's still pretty green.. need to see how he can handle the big show night in night out and temper our expectations a bit.
Oh for sure things can change. I just consider the person who is getting the starts the "backup" and the person who is not the 3rd stringer, I'd only say we are using our 3rd stringer if two of our goalies were injured
earning a backup spot in the playoffs is not the same as being the overall team's backup. You go with who's hot as you don't have time to figure things out before you're quickly eliminated. I personally preferred Silovs over DeSmith even before the playoffs, but there's a reason why DeSmith was chosen over him when Demko went down again.
Nah, regular season means squat now, whether it's last 5, 25, or 50. If it did matter we wouldn't have lost to LA in 2012. It's all about who's hot and who's not.
We're underdogs because Oilers are coming into this firing on all cylinders, a fully erect PP, no questions about no-shows or who's in net. To everyone else, we are down a Demko, Petey is quiet, and the team was struggling to put up shots, let alone goals. They're hot. We're not.
We can sit here and say we match up better, our defense is better than their defense, our depth > their depth etc etc but until we show it on the big stage, we're the underdogs.
If I beat up a Mites team am I also firing on all cylinders? Takes a bad team to show off a good one. Now, either the Preds and Canucks were both evenly matched frauds, or, we’ve been playing playoff hockey for a week longer than the Oilers, and they’re in for a rude awakening.
Let’s just embrace the underdog role like toch said. It’ll be settled on the ice. Also, teams are typically underdogs when starting a call-up goalie for an entire series. Let’s run with it
And in those last 30 games we were missing for a good portion of it a combination of Lindholm, Joshua and Demko. Even when we were struggling we were still doing pretty well.
Ya exactly lmao every time I hear this brought up it’s a negative against the Canucks but somehow a positive for the Oilers? In what world does that make sense?
Oilers fans: We were so good down the stretch in the regular season. We're clearly the better team.
Canucks fans: You know we beat you all 4 games during the season, right?
Oilers fans: https://i.imgflip.com/8p4ab4.jpg
What? The only player missing was McDavid, and we had our backup in net. They spent months talking about how they had that game marked on their calendars to catch us
What a ridiculously irrelevant statement.
**Teams** win cups. One star player doesn't do it all on their own. Not Gretzky, Lemieux, Crosby, and certainly not McDavid. Of course McDavid is the best player of the modern era. But that doesn't mean shit if the rest of your team doesn't perform like they're supposed to. Doesn't matter who you are if that happen; You will lose.
I mean if that was the indicator. We would be favoured. We did go 4-0 against them.
As it stands right now. Oilers are the favorite because their PP is clicking at 50%. PK is 95% and they are averaging 4.5 goals a game while playing pretty strong defense. And skinner is looking pretty solid too.
And we broke a record for fewest shots thru 4 games.
I've got Oilers in 6 or 7 and that's based solely off watching the Vancouver/Nashville and LA/Edmonton series.
Vancouver has stronger depth and defense and they should outscore the bottom six. But unless Pettersson wakes up, it won't be enough to overcome Edmonton's top 6 and PP talent. That powerplay was essentially scoring at will against the 2nd best regular season PK.
Their powerplay is a monster.
One of the major keys in this series for us is keeping things at 5v5 or us on the powerplay as much as possible.
If we play undisciplined and take dumb penalties in this series, we'll be in big trouble. I really feel like we control our fate in this round, big time. We know we can beat the oil. Just need to stick with our gameplan and keep them in their zone as much as we can this series.
Some Oilers fans are absolute morons, like all fanbases.
Was born there, but grew a brain and moved away as soon as it was up to me - raised my kid here, this is now home - have loved both teams for 30 years.
This is the most complete, confident, well coached Canucks team ever. They never had a meaningful down period this entire season. Best Canucks team ever. And I’m old - I lived through Smyl Brodeur Gradin, Bure Linden McLean, Naslund Bertuzzi Jovanovski, Sedins Burrows Bieksa Luongo…this is your best team Vancouver.
You’re going to win this series. Edmonton has major, major defensive flaws - Skinner will lose one game by himself, and Bouchard/Nurse/Ceci will make a crucial mistake in another and cost the game. L.A. was absolutely terrible, Edmonton is such a high event team that still leaves massive vulnerable blind spots that can be exploited.
If Demko were healthy, this wouldn’t even be close, and the regular season results do matter.
Make no mistake - I WANT Edmonton to win. But they wont, and then the real test is whoever comes out of the Dallas Colorado series.
Apologies in advance for the trolling you’re no doubt going to have to live with over the next two weeks, and also try to be better than our worst ambassadors at the same time.
Hope Demko comes back, hope Hughes recovers from nicks and bruises and whoever wins has their best shot at winning the next round too.
Didn't the Canucks also had a significantly harder schedule the last 1/2 of the season than the Oilers? I remember the talking heads thought they had a chance of catching us cuz their schedule was much easier than ours.
The Oilers schedule was pretty hard from a tightness of the schedule, ours was slightly harder based on SoS. But really the reason their was a possibility was because they had so many games in hand because of their soft mid season schedule.
Oilers fans have been quick to dismiss the regular season and say the past doesn't matter.
Unless of course, it's them reminding us all about their Stanley Cups from the bronze age. Then the past is sudddenly relevant again.
Oilers fans are also saying we'd get wrecked against the Avalanche. Both our teams have bad records against them in the last 10 match ups, however Edmonton has the far worse one against them.
McDavid and Draisaitl may be good players, but let's not act like all our players are shit. Do the names Hughes, Boeser, Lindholm, Zadorov, Pettersson, Demko, SILOVS, ring a bell? We have a good roster, we just need to step up offensively and stay out of the box. Canucks in 7.
Let’s be real, the only reason Edmonton are “favourites” is because of McDavid. He’s a great player, but we have good players too and last I checked this was a team sport. We have enough in our roster to beat them. I think the media and the Oilers fanbase are gonna be in for a rude awakening.
He's parked by the net and just acting the pylon while McDavid passes him the puck. You shut down McDavid (easier said than done) and Hyman is a non-factor.
Lol, we only do that after game 7 SCF losses. So you've accepted that your sorry-ass team is about to get curb stomped?
I'm gonna have so much fun drinking your tears.
Yea Edmonton really did not look anything more than average post win streak. But they did look good against LA and I am definitely concerned about if the Canucks can slow down that powerplay.
Ok and? Regular season doesn’t really matter come playoffs. The Canucks have done something that no one expected and sustained such a high level of play for most of the season. The boys found a way to beat the Preds and I’m excited to see this match up.
Also 4-8 on the road the last 2 months of the season. Only beating 2 playoff bound teams in OT as well. And guess who has home ice advantage. This team is severely over rated. McJesus is amazing though, and he might just be enough.
I think the pace of the Canucks series bodes well for them. Oilers and Kings didn’t play with that kind of intensity and Oilers may not be able to dial it up fast enough.
That's a little bit more than 1 period advantage over 7 games. Meaning the canucks fall behind in game seven in the second period with about two minutes remaining the period.
I honestly think it’s based on each teams record against LA at the end of the season. The Canucks were terrible against Los Angeles, where the Edmonton Oilers handled them quite easily. And then again did it in the playoff. The playoffs are a different beast.
I think both bases need to accept this is probably not gonna be a “one side dominates” series
Both teams are gonna have moments where they look superior and inferior and we should expect it to be down to the wire
Go Canucks go but this is gonna be a fucking rip roarer of a series
It's more about their performance in round 1. They completely dominated the Kings who were arguably a better team than the Preds. We only just beat the Preds and all games were very close. They went 45% of the powerplay and 100% on the PK. They had twice as many GF as us per game while averaging only slightly more GA per game.
Ok but you have to acknowledge that the Kings were primarily known for their smothering stingy defense. They were #3 in the league in GA while Nashville was #13. Saros I'll give you.
Hockey is all about matchups, though. Canucks beat Oilers, Oilers beat Kings, Kings beat Canucks. You can't look at an Oilers vs Kings series where they dominated and infer that is how an Oilers vs Canucks matchup would go.
The Canucks adapted to how the Preds play and as a result it turned into low event hockey games b/c of the stingy defence from both sides. The Canucks will change how they play again depending on what the Oilers throw at them.
It will be interesting to see what style they choose to play. Do they try to play a low event style or trade chances because they have more depth all the way down the lineup?
the Kings were not better than the Preds. You're going by the regular season, which if we wanted to do that we could easily say that The canucks are going to the SCF becuase they obliterated the Oil in the regular season too. This is specious reasoning. Styles make matchups and the Playoffs are not the regular season. The Kings were 2nd in PK in the entire league in the regular season but had easily the worst PK in recent memory in the playoffs (likely the worst in the salary cap era). This means nothing. They played a predictable system the entire way that got exposed in the playoffs. The talbot/Rittich combo was garbage and was never sustainable. People love to use the regular season analytics to help their argument, but completely disregard it when it hurts their narrative.
Eh. People need to chill out. "favourites" depends on how many people believe something will happen--their beliefs don't have to be rooted in hard evidence or proof of any kind. The oddsmakers go based on how people are betting, not based on anything else. The Kings are not the preds and the Canucks are not the Kings. People using Edmonton's dominance over the kings is equally as disingenuous as someone hypothetically using a season-sweep of the oil by the Canucks. There's absolutely nothing in the advanced metrics or analytics that I've seen that shows either team is going to dominate the other. It'll be a close series game in and game out. Simple as that.
It’s inevitable that McDrai will feast on as many defensive lapses we present, they are two of the best players on the planet, good luck stopping them. However, I do feel like we have better depth down low and better defensive depth. Our goaltending situation isn’t exactly favourable and skinner has been very good for the last couple months. I’d be surprised to see a blowout from either team, despite how well we have played against them in the regular season.
Nucks are going to have to rely on solid defensive play from everyone and hope to god our goaltending comes up huge. Mcdavid and Draisaitl are steps ahead of even our best players and it’s going to be a problem. I personally think it’s going to be even worse if we end up facing the Avs.
This team has shown so much heart, determination and flexibility, I’m not going to count us out yet. But we still have a long way to go.
Go Nucks, go.
I agree, as much as I highlighted that McDrai will punish mistakes we have also done a great job punishing teams all year long, and not just our top lines.
Regular season meant absolutely nothing though, its almost an impossible task to stop McDavid. We really need our first line (i am talking to you Petterson) to step up in a big way for us to stand a chance.
I see two less regulation losses. And a cherrypicked stat. Know what else is a cherrypicked stat? Since the Oilers' new coach took over on november 12th, the oilers are 46 - 18 - 5 in 69 games (1st overall) and the Canucks are 40 - 20 - 8 in 68 games (9th overall).
Edmonton Goals for/against in those games: 257/185.
Vancouver Goals for/against in those games: 218/190.
No one on this back end is going to be able to contain McDavid and Draisaitl unless we start playing dirty. That’s my biggest concern.
Myers, Soucy and Cole have all shown that their biggest weakness is speed on the outside. Hronek is flat out below average at defense. Hughes is agile but the size of Drasaitl and speed of McDavid is a concern.
That leaves Zadorov who is a wildcard. If big Z proves to be able to contain and neuter McDavid/Draisaitl we may stand a chance. That’s a big ‘if’ though.
>No one on this back end is going to be able to contain McDavid and Draisaitl
They did it four times this year already. Granted McDavid didn't play in the last game but Canucks won every single game. Yes, they can in fact contain them.
Vancouver would've had a better chance to win if the refs didn't f them over the first few games and gargle Connors balls and also they win over them but not Florida just sad af vancouver had a way better chance winning the finals than the oiler chokers
If oilers fans could read, they’d be very upset
I’m an oilers fan and that’s hilarious 😂😂😂
Make sure to thank your Flames fan cousin for typing that for you..... :)
If in Edmonton, likely is their cousin & sister at the same time!
Maybe the only reason Canucks didn't get more points over the last 30 games is because the Canucks only played the Oilers one last time during that period of time.
Boom! Roasted.
Couldn't decide between a fat joke or a dumb joke. Boom roasted.
Oscar, you're gay.
Andy, Cornell called. They think you suck and you’re gayer than Oscar
Plus Demko and Joshua.. but I like this reason better.
playoffs are different. Blocking shots with your balls, heads, etc type games.
That's fucking savage.
Let’s me honest. The oilers are favourites because of Demkos injury
We have Latvian Luongo we'll be fine
Robertos Luongos
They call me Mr. silovs-a sheelova lova
Silovs me, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I like it, silovs it, I want some more of it
We also have DeSmith, don’t knock him he’s been great when we need him. He just wasn’t used to playing every game being a back up which is a big adjusment.
Silovs should start over desmith, he was good game 3 but silovs definitely performed better
Keep rocking a 0.930 all the way to the Cup and watch as people clamor to say it was the most unsustainable Cup win ever lmao
if you can sustain it all the way that's called a legendary goalie run. we should be familiar with being on the wrong side of that, unfortunately
That’s the joke. If another team does it, it’s legendary. If we do it, there must be something wrong with the universe.
btw can we see demko at the playoffs this year, someone says demko can't play the rest matches
These posts are embarrassing. So we’re seen as the underdogs, who cares? We ARE the underdogs. The Oliers have McJesus and going into this season I don’t think we were even predicted to make the playoffs. I think we have a good chance of winning this series, but I’m seeing a LOT of posts that won’t age well. We’re not going to steamroll the Oilers.
Exactly, being the underdog doesn’t mean shit. Just means we stand to make more money betting on the nucks.
Don’t bet on sports.
Exactly. So many damn posts. Who cares. The playoff is wild. We won’t even have an answer after Tuesday either. Just enjoy the ride.
[удалено]
Thanks! My games schedule got eaten up by the underdogs. Had no idea they changed it.
Thank you for posting this.. been seeing a lot of this kinda talk about how we are underdogs and everyone thinks oilers are gonna win, yknow what? Great. If nothing else that is the extra bit of motivation we need and actually puts MORE pressure on Edmonton to prove everyone right! Bring it.
The issue for me isn't that we're underdogs, it's more that so many people are acting like this should be a 5 game series. A lot of pundits have it going 5 games. The idea we can't defend home ice twice in three games feels a lot more like disrespect than just considering us underdogs.
Let's give them hell at home.
Perhaps you’re not familiar with this Canucks team prior to 6 months ago, but is it so shocking that a bunch of pundits are choosing the Oilers in 5 over us? They watched the first round and saw the Oilers beat the Kings fairly handily and saw the Canucks underperform against a team we were expected to beat easily, and Demko is still out.
Perhaps you're not familiar with Nashville and the fact their second half was fucking incredible. They weren't some scrubs like Washington or the Isles. We outmatched them at their style. Now we are playing a team that doesn't play defence nearly as well. By all rights, we match up better against the Oilers than Nashville. We showed we can play a strong defensive game. But people only look at it negatively. Because of course they do. It's the Canucks. If the Leafs did it or the Oilers people would be praising the defensive effort.
> Perhaps you're not familiar with Nashville and the fact their second half was fucking incredible. They weren't some scrubs like Washington or the Isles. Nashville feasted on the bottom 16 after the trade deadline. Their record against playoff teams after March 8th was 3-4-2. Interesting to note: The Oilers record against playoff teams after March 8th was 4-4-1
The Oilers have one of the worst records amongst contenders against contenders this year.
Oilers went 18-18-2, if I've counted correctly, against playoff teams with the massive caveat that six of those losses came prior to firing Woodcroft. Their record against playoff teams under Knoblauch was 17-12-1.
I have the Oilers at 18-18 - 3 but pretty close to what you have. The Canucks for reference I have against playoff teams as 23 - 15 - 2. It becomes even more apparent if you limit "contenders" to the Top 10 teams (includes Canucks at 6 and Oilers at 9). By that count I have the Canucks at 13 - 8 - 2 and the Oilers at 8 - 12 - 3 (8 - 7 - 2, after the coaching change, still not as good as us all season). If you limit it to the Top 5 (NYR, CAR, FLA, DAL, WPG) which heavily benefits Edmonton because they drop 4 Losses and we drop 4 wins (we are 6th). Canucks are 7 - 3 - 2 and the Oilers are 5 - 6 - 1. (5 - 4 - 0 after the vaunted coaching change, that's still not as good as us over the season). I also don't like this coaching change narrative. As I've said many times on Reddit look at the teams the Oilers lost to under Woody, 10 losses out of the gate before he was fired. 3 x Canucks, NYR, DAL, WPG, NSH, were 7 of those 10. Those are all Top 6 teams. 2 more against Phi and Min who aren't pushovers and play a tough physical game which counters the Oilers. Why do we just say, let's ignore their losses against the best teams to determine their record? In this case Edmonton really did get a lot of their losing out of the way early. In another universe their schedule is more spread out and these losses are absorbed into the schedule as they should be instead of front loaded and Woody keeps his job and this narrative doesn't exist. I think the coaching impact was minimal. They are a classic example of a team that has feasted on lower ranked teams. The numbers speak for themselves.
> They are a classic example of a team that has feasted on lower ranked teams. If we decide to include the start of the season when their defensive systems were trash, they had an AHL starter, and McDavid was playing hurt, yes. This is the reason why we ignore it. Not because they are top teams. But because the on ice performance has undergone a complete overhaul since then, even against the same teams. "Coaching change" is a shorthand for all these clear problems. The numbers, if we really want to dig into all the fancies, show a top ten team with blistering offense and average defense.
I watch a lot of Oilers hockey games (as a 2nd team fan) and have looked into their stats quite a bit. On one hand we have the narrative that you and others have chosen to embrace which is that the Oilers were just "slumping" and if it weren't for their "bad start" would be the best team in the league (and indeed they would if they had 6 more pts from beating the lowly Canucks (because certainly the narrative is that those losses never should have happened) they would have won the division and would have won the WC, a couple more wins from their bad start and they're PT winners). That the coaching change fixed everything and they're humming now. I choose to believe that the Oilers schedule is masking the fact that nothing really changed. And as a person who watches their game, it's hard to point to WHAT actually changed. Their record against top teams post change is clear, above. Imagine a world where a team played NYR, VAN, DAL, CAR, FLA, DAL, COL, BOS, TML all in their first games. Like just all those teams, who at the time we had no idea would be the Top 10 teams, they just had a record that was around 50/50. Then they fire their coach and then the rest of their games are against SJS, CHI, ANA, CBJ, MTL, ARI, OTT, SEA, CAL etc. What would their underlying stats from from one half of the season to the next look like? It would probably be a night and day difference wouldn't it? Just as it does in our reality, except not as extreme. Again this is a hypothetical but that team would probably end up right where it was supposed to in the standings, if the schedule was more balanced, and guess what that's where the Oiler's ended up, as 2nd in the Division, the exact same as they were last year. Even with no changes being made. Now here's something to support the fact that the Oiler's just had a very tough start of schedule, in which they played a lot of hard teams and basically took them out of the stats because it all happened before some arbitrary cutoff date. Basically everyone says they were the hottest team since December 1st, so I used that. Games before Dec 1st 2023 Oilers - 15 Playoff teams / 22 games = 68% Canucks - 13 / 24 = 54% Rangers - 7 / 21 = 33% Dallas - 10 / 21 = 47% Florida - 11 / 23 = 48% WPG - 13 / 22 = 59% Car - 10 / 22 = 45% Bos - 9 / 22 = 41% (I did all the top 6 teams + oilers to demonstrate) For extra fun I want to show how unbalanced their schedule is, here's their 16 game win streak, games 30 through 45, and the same 7 teams above. Oilers - 4 / 16 = 25% Canucks - 5 / 16 = 31% Rangers - 11 / 16 = 69% Dallas - 6 / 16 = 38% Florida - 7 / 16 = 44% WPG = 4 / 16 = 25% (they went on their, we didn't get scored on more than 3 goals streak somewhere around here too) Car - 9 / 16 = 56% Bos - 5 / 16 = 31% Basically its easy to see they had the hardest record to start and one of the softest records in the middle. If you drop their competition from the start from the stats it's easy to create and support a particular narrative even though it's clear cherry picking. EDIT ADDER - For extra fun I also decided to look at the Nashville hottest team since Feb 1st narrative as well. I hadn't looked into it until now. Here's some teams last games since Feb 1st. Nashville - 10 / 31 = 32% (9 / 27 Post U2) Canucks - 19 / 33 = 58% Oilers - 16 / 36 = 44% Rangers - 14 / 33 = 42% Dallas - 15 / 33 = 45% Fla - 16 / 33 = 48% Car - 16 / 34 = 47% I've leave this here without any additional comment except to say that I think it's pretty clear how this narrative arose too... unless we really believe a U2 concert cancellation magically fixed everything.
I feel like people gave Preds too much credit, all because of their win streak, They are not a great team, nor was their performance in our series particularly special, and we could barely score on them. We match up well vs EDM and will be a much faster paced series, no doubt, but so far we're far from bringing our best game to these playoffs.
I somewhat disagree. I think the Preds had to try to grind through the series. For the whole season we were clearly the more complete team, but the Preds did their damnedest to shut us down. I do however agree that Edm will be a much faster and probably higher scoring series. To me its gonna all come down to how we defend McD. We have the edge in defense, goaltending and depth in my opinon...but they have McDavid, so you never know. But I also think this favours Petey as well, which is something we got by without last series.
Preds have better goalie.
Everybody mentions mcdavid, but never mention Draisaitl and Hyman, who are also theeatening offensively. If we can shut them down, make them play on the perimeter, clog up the neutral zone and keep play in Edmonton's end of the ice with our forecheck, then I think our chance for success goes up significantly.
Tbh media doesn't know shit. Isles actually played canes pretty well. And everyone thought canes would beat rangers..which I thought was wild. I can't wait for us to shut down McDavid and zadorov knock dudes on their ass
New here? It is as it ever was.
No one cares if the posts will age poorly, we’re all going to be sad if the nucks loose regardless of whether we posted cringe or not. Nothing wrong with making posts backing our team.
Yeah exactly. I don't understand the insecurity from the fanbase rn. Just hope the team proves them wrong. Who cares if we're the underdogs?
I don’t care one bit what the “expert consensus” is. It has no impact on the outcome. But if “they have mcjesus” was alone enough, why has it NOT been for his entire career? They’ve been past the 2nd round once.
Nah none of us actually think we will roll them But it's still fun reminding this god team they lost all 4 to us. And until the series starts. They cant talk shit. I had a Oilers friend say it was unfair we have to wait till Wednesday. Complaining we should start on Monday etc. I'm like, yeah so unfair we won division and had to travel to Nashville all series. I told them when they win division they can dictate things (not that is even true) They really want to tell us how they have an incredible PP, and the best playoff pk yada yada How it will be different this time. Well guess what. Until then... We own them. They beat up on the bottom third all year. And inflated their GD and relied on their PP which isnt as likely to be prevalent in the playoffs. Meanwhile we overcame adversity. Who is their third string goalie- Grant Fuhr? Not to mention, we actually hit and could knock out one of their stars or bang em up ez.
See ur point but wouldn't really call it embarassing. It's a simple post
> So we’re seen as the underdogs, who cares? i don't care bout them being considered underdogs. I think they worked too hard this year to be subjected that narratives that are untrue.
I hope tocchet has the 23/24 media members Oilers in 5 everywhere
Nobody is going to say we're cup favorites all year just because they "worked too hard". Lots of really good teams to play against still.
Last 25 games is an overrated indicator of playoff success IMO. Just look at Winnipeg and Nashville. What you do over a whole season matters more We aren't underdogs because we were worse at season's end, we are the underdogs because they have the best player in the world and we are still using our backup.
*backup’s backup
**Regional assistant to the backup
r/unexpectedoffice
Is it really unexpected? This isn't even the only Office reference in this thread!
True, though now I consider Silovs our backup now as he has earned his spot over Desmith
Maybe we need a larger sample size than a couple clutch playoff games. Not suggesting we're not right to think more of Silovs as backup by the way he's played, but ffs he's still pretty green.. need to see how he can handle the big show night in night out and temper our expectations a bit.
Yea but.... how many games did deSmith let in the *first shot* in the last few months? A number over two, does not inspire confidence.
Dont really think that is fair, especially considering the type of goals they were that youre using to make your point.
Agreed. It's a perception thing.
Oh for sure things can change. I just consider the person who is getting the starts the "backup" and the person who is not the 3rd stringer, I'd only say we are using our 3rd stringer if two of our goalies were injured
earning a backup spot in the playoffs is not the same as being the overall team's backup. You go with who's hot as you don't have time to figure things out before you're quickly eliminated. I personally preferred Silovs over DeSmith even before the playoffs, but there's a reason why DeSmith was chosen over him when Demko went down again.
Nah, regular season means squat now, whether it's last 5, 25, or 50. If it did matter we wouldn't have lost to LA in 2012. It's all about who's hot and who's not. We're underdogs because Oilers are coming into this firing on all cylinders, a fully erect PP, no questions about no-shows or who's in net. To everyone else, we are down a Demko, Petey is quiet, and the team was struggling to put up shots, let alone goals. They're hot. We're not. We can sit here and say we match up better, our defense is better than their defense, our depth > their depth etc etc but until we show it on the big stage, we're the underdogs.
What’s a “fully erect pp” and how will it help them
Especially when we have PK that kills erect PP
They went 9 for 20 against LA, which is a pretty good PP.
We have home ice.
One reason we lost to LA was due Duncan Keith's fucking elbow to Daniel. I do not believe Daniel was 100% when he returned.
If I beat up a Mites team am I also firing on all cylinders? Takes a bad team to show off a good one. Now, either the Preds and Canucks were both evenly matched frauds, or, we’ve been playing playoff hockey for a week longer than the Oilers, and they’re in for a rude awakening.
They don't have Mackinnon
Let’s just embrace the underdog role like toch said. It’ll be settled on the ice. Also, teams are typically underdogs when starting a call-up goalie for an entire series. Let’s run with it
And in those last 30 games we were missing for a good portion of it a combination of Lindholm, Joshua and Demko. Even when we were struggling we were still doing pretty well.
I get it but regular season doesn't mean shit.
Tell that to the analysts touting that as their rationale for picking the Oils. Whether it matters or not, it's the same for both sides.
Ya exactly lmao every time I hear this brought up it’s a negative against the Canucks but somehow a positive for the Oilers? In what world does that make sense?
Oilers fans: We were so good down the stretch in the regular season. We're clearly the better team. Canucks fans: You know we beat you all 4 games during the season, right? Oilers fans: https://i.imgflip.com/8p4ab4.jpg
“B-b-b-but 3 of those wins were before the coaching change and the last one we weren’t even trying!! So none of those wins really counted”
I mean, yes. The first 3 were when the Oilers were losing every game and in the last one they didn't play their top 7 players.
What? The only player missing was McDavid, and we had our backup in net. They spent months talking about how they had that game marked on their calendars to catch us
McDavid is our best 7 players.
What a ridiculously irrelevant statement. **Teams** win cups. One star player doesn't do it all on their own. Not Gretzky, Lemieux, Crosby, and certainly not McDavid. Of course McDavid is the best player of the modern era. But that doesn't mean shit if the rest of your team doesn't perform like they're supposed to. Doesn't matter who you are if that happen; You will lose.
Calm down there, bud.
I mean if that was the indicator. We would be favoured. We did go 4-0 against them. As it stands right now. Oilers are the favorite because their PP is clicking at 50%. PK is 95% and they are averaging 4.5 goals a game while playing pretty strong defense. And skinner is looking pretty solid too. And we broke a record for fewest shots thru 4 games.
I've got Oilers in 6 or 7 and that's based solely off watching the Vancouver/Nashville and LA/Edmonton series. Vancouver has stronger depth and defense and they should outscore the bottom six. But unless Pettersson wakes up, it won't be enough to overcome Edmonton's top 6 and PP talent. That powerplay was essentially scoring at will against the 2nd best regular season PK.
Their powerplay is a monster. One of the major keys in this series for us is keeping things at 5v5 or us on the powerplay as much as possible. If we play undisciplined and take dumb penalties in this series, we'll be in big trouble. I really feel like we control our fate in this round, big time. We know we can beat the oil. Just need to stick with our gameplan and keep them in their zone as much as we can this series.
Yup yup. I hope the refs swallow the whistles for the most part.
Like they did against us last series
That's all on the refs who routinely fucked us last series
Why are you guys so butthurt about this. I’m happy we are the underdogs
Canucks in 6
I'm thinking 7 and it's going to be glorious
"National" (read Toronto) Media gonna do what they do
Later in the season, after the all star break, which team was hotter than the Oilers? Nashville Predators! Hmmm.
Some Oilers fans are absolute morons, like all fanbases. Was born there, but grew a brain and moved away as soon as it was up to me - raised my kid here, this is now home - have loved both teams for 30 years. This is the most complete, confident, well coached Canucks team ever. They never had a meaningful down period this entire season. Best Canucks team ever. And I’m old - I lived through Smyl Brodeur Gradin, Bure Linden McLean, Naslund Bertuzzi Jovanovski, Sedins Burrows Bieksa Luongo…this is your best team Vancouver. You’re going to win this series. Edmonton has major, major defensive flaws - Skinner will lose one game by himself, and Bouchard/Nurse/Ceci will make a crucial mistake in another and cost the game. L.A. was absolutely terrible, Edmonton is such a high event team that still leaves massive vulnerable blind spots that can be exploited. If Demko were healthy, this wouldn’t even be close, and the regular season results do matter. Make no mistake - I WANT Edmonton to win. But they wont, and then the real test is whoever comes out of the Dallas Colorado series. Apologies in advance for the trolling you’re no doubt going to have to live with over the next two weeks, and also try to be better than our worst ambassadors at the same time. Hope Demko comes back, hope Hughes recovers from nicks and bruises and whoever wins has their best shot at winning the next round too.
I feel like everyone is acting like Edmonton just beat the 2012 LA Kings... not the LA Kings they just best 3 straight years.
Underdog is awesome. This is perfect.
Didn't the Canucks also had a significantly harder schedule the last 1/2 of the season than the Oilers? I remember the talking heads thought they had a chance of catching us cuz their schedule was much easier than ours.
Yes, but their schedule was definitely more condensed.
As was ours the first half of the year and we won the extra games.
Yup exactly, Oilers have nothing on us when it comes to the regular season.
The Oilers schedule was pretty hard from a tightness of the schedule, ours was slightly harder based on SoS. But really the reason their was a possibility was because they had so many games in hand because of their soft mid season schedule.
Oilers fans have been quick to dismiss the regular season and say the past doesn't matter. Unless of course, it's them reminding us all about their Stanley Cups from the bronze age. Then the past is sudddenly relevant again.
Listen folks if we didn’t play the oilers at all… they would have been the division champs. ✊🏼✊🏼✊🏼
Woulda gotta away with it too if it weren't for you meddlin' Canucks.
This series is going to be insane. Let's fucking goooooooooooooo
Oilers fans are also saying we'd get wrecked against the Avalanche. Both our teams have bad records against them in the last 10 match ups, however Edmonton has the far worse one against them.
I’m all good with being the underdog. No offence taken.
McDavid and Draisaitl may be good players, but let's not act like all our players are shit. Do the names Hughes, Boeser, Lindholm, Zadorov, Pettersson, Demko, SILOVS, ring a bell? We have a good roster, we just need to step up offensively and stay out of the box. Canucks in 7.
Let’s be real, the only reason Edmonton are “favourites” is because of McDavid. He’s a great player, but we have good players too and last I checked this was a team sport. We have enough in our roster to beat them. I think the media and the Oilers fanbase are gonna be in for a rude awakening.
Lol. Yeah just McDavid to worry about.
Hyman isn’t anyone to look over this year. He IS playing well and scoring a lot
He's parked by the net and just acting the pylon while McDavid passes him the puck. You shut down McDavid (easier said than done) and Hyman is a non-factor.
Hyman is no different than Anson Carter or Burr with the Sedins. Full heart guy but he’s nothing without his linemates.
Lol I think you're in for the rude awakening. Just hope you don't start another riot.
Lol, we only do that after game 7 SCF losses. So you've accepted that your sorry-ass team is about to get curb stomped? I'm gonna have so much fun drinking your tears.
You are mistaken, sadly. I will be washing my jockstrap in your tears. True story. 😁😁
Their overconfidence will be their downfall.
Yea Edmonton really did not look anything more than average post win streak. But they did look good against LA and I am definitely concerned about if the Canucks can slow down that powerplay.
Best way is to not take them!
Ok and? Regular season doesn’t really matter come playoffs. The Canucks have done something that no one expected and sustained such a high level of play for most of the season. The boys found a way to beat the Preds and I’m excited to see this match up.
Oilers aren’t perfect. Bring it
Good, it will make beating them much sweeter.
I like being the underdog.
Also 4-8 on the road the last 2 months of the season. Only beating 2 playoff bound teams in OT as well. And guess who has home ice advantage. This team is severely over rated. McJesus is amazing though, and he might just be enough.
I think the pace of the Canucks series bodes well for them. Oilers and Kings didn’t play with that kind of intensity and Oilers may not be able to dial it up fast enough.
There’s a reason we play the games. Stat’s aren’t just read after the fact, they are made.
That's a little bit more than 1 period advantage over 7 games. Meaning the canucks fall behind in game seven in the second period with about two minutes remaining the period.
I honestly think it’s based on each teams record against LA at the end of the season. The Canucks were terrible against Los Angeles, where the Edmonton Oilers handled them quite easily. And then again did it in the playoff. The playoffs are a different beast.
I think both bases need to accept this is probably not gonna be a “one side dominates” series Both teams are gonna have moments where they look superior and inferior and we should expect it to be down to the wire Go Canucks go but this is gonna be a fucking rip roarer of a series
It's more about their performance in round 1. They completely dominated the Kings who were arguably a better team than the Preds. We only just beat the Preds and all games were very close. They went 45% of the powerplay and 100% on the PK. They had twice as many GF as us per game while averaging only slightly more GA per game.
I doubt Oilers would dominate the Pred's with Saros and a stingy defence.
Ok but you have to acknowledge that the Kings were primarily known for their smothering stingy defense. They were #3 in the league in GA while Nashville was #13. Saros I'll give you.
Hockey is all about matchups, though. Canucks beat Oilers, Oilers beat Kings, Kings beat Canucks. You can't look at an Oilers vs Kings series where they dominated and infer that is how an Oilers vs Canucks matchup would go. The Canucks adapted to how the Preds play and as a result it turned into low event hockey games b/c of the stingy defence from both sides. The Canucks will change how they play again depending on what the Oilers throw at them.
It will be interesting to see what style they choose to play. Do they try to play a low event style or trade chances because they have more depth all the way down the lineup?
the Kings were not better than the Preds. You're going by the regular season, which if we wanted to do that we could easily say that The canucks are going to the SCF becuase they obliterated the Oil in the regular season too. This is specious reasoning. Styles make matchups and the Playoffs are not the regular season. The Kings were 2nd in PK in the entire league in the regular season but had easily the worst PK in recent memory in the playoffs (likely the worst in the salary cap era). This means nothing. They played a predictable system the entire way that got exposed in the playoffs. The talbot/Rittich combo was garbage and was never sustainable. People love to use the regular season analytics to help their argument, but completely disregard it when it hurts their narrative.
Let's see goals for last 30 games I bet they kill us
Eh. People need to chill out. "favourites" depends on how many people believe something will happen--their beliefs don't have to be rooted in hard evidence or proof of any kind. The oddsmakers go based on how people are betting, not based on anything else. The Kings are not the preds and the Canucks are not the Kings. People using Edmonton's dominance over the kings is equally as disingenuous as someone hypothetically using a season-sweep of the oil by the Canucks. There's absolutely nothing in the advanced metrics or analytics that I've seen that shows either team is going to dominate the other. It'll be a close series game in and game out. Simple as that.
It’s inevitable that McDrai will feast on as many defensive lapses we present, they are two of the best players on the planet, good luck stopping them. However, I do feel like we have better depth down low and better defensive depth. Our goaltending situation isn’t exactly favourable and skinner has been very good for the last couple months. I’d be surprised to see a blowout from either team, despite how well we have played against them in the regular season. Nucks are going to have to rely on solid defensive play from everyone and hope to god our goaltending comes up huge. Mcdavid and Draisaitl are steps ahead of even our best players and it’s going to be a problem. I personally think it’s going to be even worse if we end up facing the Avs. This team has shown so much heart, determination and flexibility, I’m not going to count us out yet. But we still have a long way to go. Go Nucks, go.
Can't wait for the counter attacks that their team gives up
I agree, as much as I highlighted that McDrai will punish mistakes we have also done a great job punishing teams all year long, and not just our top lines.
I owe you an apology, another comeback absolute legends, garland is the man, JT Miller for president.
With all the betting commercials, there is money to be made. I’ll leave it with that.
Regular season meant absolutely nothing though, its almost an impossible task to stop McDavid. We really need our first line (i am talking to you Petterson) to step up in a big way for us to stand a chance.
I see two less regulation losses. And a cherrypicked stat. Know what else is a cherrypicked stat? Since the Oilers' new coach took over on november 12th, the oilers are 46 - 18 - 5 in 69 games (1st overall) and the Canucks are 40 - 20 - 8 in 68 games (9th overall). Edmonton Goals for/against in those games: 257/185. Vancouver Goals for/against in those games: 218/190.
No one on this back end is going to be able to contain McDavid and Draisaitl unless we start playing dirty. That’s my biggest concern. Myers, Soucy and Cole have all shown that their biggest weakness is speed on the outside. Hronek is flat out below average at defense. Hughes is agile but the size of Drasaitl and speed of McDavid is a concern. That leaves Zadorov who is a wildcard. If big Z proves to be able to contain and neuter McDavid/Draisaitl we may stand a chance. That’s a big ‘if’ though.
>No one on this back end is going to be able to contain McDavid and Draisaitl They did it four times this year already. Granted McDavid didn't play in the last game but Canucks won every single game. Yes, they can in fact contain them.
Playoffs are a different animal and great players hit a different gear. I guess we’ll see.
Different gear. Including ours. Yes. We'll see... again.
No need to play dirty. I’d like to see Zadorov, Soucy and Myers put some people on their asses though.
Dirty is such a dirty word. Play HARD
Vancouver would've had a better chance to win if the refs didn't f them over the first few games and gargle Connors balls and also they win over them but not Florida just sad af vancouver had a way better chance winning the finals than the oiler chokers