It wasn’t how the Edmonton Oilers drew it up, but it worked.
Leon Draisaitl was a game-time decision on Friday night for Game 2.
The Oilers superstar isn’t close to 100 percent and left Game 1 in the second period with an ailment that the club described, in a way that defied belief, as an equipment issue and cramping.
On Thursday, Draisaitl was absent from Oilers practice. He took the warmup skate on Friday night and, according to Oilers head coach Kris Knoblach, wasn’t a sure bet to participate in Game 2 until just about the final moment.
With Draisaitl apparently limited, Knoblach opted to deploy him on the wing instead of at centre. The thinking was that it’s a less physically challenging spot to play, Knoblach explained postgame.
This wasn’t a tactical adjustment by the Oilers. It wasn’t something that Knoblach came up with while staring intently at the whiteboard between Games 1 and 2. It was a necessity, one motivated by — as the Oilers bench boss put it — a desire to “protect Leon.”
Then the game began, the Connor McDavid line with Draisaitl added to the mix dominated, and Knoblach rode it.
Turns out Draisaitl “didn’t need protecting tonight,” Knoblach said postgame.
As the Oilers took over Game 2 and seized home-ice advantage in this series with a massive overtime win, the performance of Edmonton’s top line was the story. Flanked by Zach Hyman and Draisaitl, McDavid dominated Game 2 by a margin that grew increasingly wide as the game went along.
By the third period, the Vancouver Canucks were just hanging on. Edmonton set up shop in Vancouver’s end of the rink in the game’s crucial minutes, forechecked the Canucks into oblivion and outshot the home team by a massive 18-4 margin after the second period.
That the game required overtime, that the Canucks were a shot away from going up 2-0 in a series that they entered as heavy underdogs, is a credit to how difficult Vancouver is to break down from the blue line in. And the fact that Arturs Silovs rather decisively outplayed Stuart Skinner.
Moves and countermoves often define playoff matchups. After necessity forced the Oilers to make a crucial adjustment that changed the dynamic of Game 2 and the very complexion of this series, Vancouver is going to need to find some answers as the series shifts to Edmonton.
So, how do the Canucks respond? What options does Rick Tocchet have? And how can Vancouver still win this series when the Oilers are rolling two of the three most productive point producers on a point-per-game basis in the history of the Stanley Cup playoffs on the same forward line (flanked, rather unfairly, by another 50-goal scorer)?
Play Better: Fixing breakouts and winning wall battles
“They’re really good players, but we made it easy on them today,” was how Canucks centre J.T. Miller summarized the performance of the Draisaitl-McDavid duo on Friday evening.
Specifically, Miller was referring to how Vancouver defended Edmonton’s elite forwards along the wall. It was a sentiment echoed by Tocchet, who noted, “We respected them a little too much in the corners.”
The first solution to examine in considering what the Canucks can do differently is simple: Vancouver can play better. And we know this team can because we saw it in Game 1. And in portions of Game 2, as well.
On the first shift of Game 2, for example, Tyler Myers went back to the Canucks’ zone to retrieve a dump-in with McDavid breathing down his neck. Myers used his massive frame and an expert angle to shield McDavid from snagging clear puck possession. Miller came low to fish out the puck, absorbed contact from Hyman and made a nifty backhand pass to Carson Soucy on the weak side for a controlled exit.
(Courtesy Sportsnet)
It was a textbook sequence on how to break out under pressure with composure against the McDavid line. The problem? Their zone exits against McDavid’s line for the rest of the game were brutal.
McDavid and Co. were relentless with their speed and tenacity on the forecheck. Meanwhile, the Canucks didn’t respond with any poise, patience or five-man connectedness. Let’s go through a few examples.
On the play below, Soucy has the puck behind the net. Brock Boeser appears to think Soucy will wheel around the net, so he slashes across. Instead, Soucy sees that the wall is sealed off and reverses the puck. The Canucks don’t have anybody there because Boeser was darting laterally, expecting a breakout on the other side, allowing McDavid to get to the puck first. From there, the Oilers press offensively.
(Courtesy Sportsnet)
In the second period, Nikita Zadorov couldn’t corral Soucy’s pass. McDavid retrieves the puck, Draisaitl swoops in down low and it leads to Mattias Ekholm’s goal.
mattias ekholm with his second goal in as many games ties it back up at 2. pic.twitter.com/ICFOxZs9jx
— zach (@zjlaing) May 11, 2024
These failed exits against Edmonton’s top line became an even bigger issue in the third period. As McDavid, Draisaitl and Hyman kept ferociously applying forecheck pressure, Canucks players would feel that duress and throw the puck away and Edmonton would turn it into extended, dangerous cycling shifts. Here’s an example in which Zadorov feels the heat and just banks it off the boards to Bouchard at the point.
(Courtesy Sportsnet)
McDavid’s line outworked the Canucks along the wall and dominated 50-50 puck battles. Watch how Soucy and Boeser are fighting for possession along the boards, looking to kill the entry, only for McDavid to emerge with the puck. It immediately leads to multiple high-danger chances.
(Courtesy Sportsnet)
When the Oilers’ top line recovered possession down low, it was impossible to steal back the puck. Draisaitl and Hyman were excellent at using their positioning to protect possession. McDavid, meanwhile, wasn’t just skating with the puck at a million miles an hour — he was purposeful and intelligent in mixing his speeds and shifting gears, which makes him unpredictable. He’d use lightning-quick starts and stops and tight edge work to manufacture space and create holes in Vancouver’s compact defensive zone structure.
(Courtesy Sportsnet)
Once McDavid and Draisaitl get set up with the puck down low, there’s no stopping them. The combination of puck protection, skating speed, absurd offensive vision, playmaking talent and finishing is impossible to defend.
The way to contain this is by preventing them from getting the puck in those situations in the first place. That means a better Canucks forecheck to disrupt Edmonton’s breakouts, cleaner zone exits under pressure and winning more 50-50 battles along the boards.
Extract a price
If the Oilers are going to play their three best forwards together, then it’s crucial that Vancouver extract a price by dominating the five-on-five matchup in all other minutes.
On Friday, that didn’t happen.
Without McDavid on the ice at five-on-five, Edmonton actually out-attempted Vancouver 26-25, although Vancouver had an edge in shots on goal (14-11) and Zadorov’s goal came with McDavid getting a breather.
That’s not enough to offset the edge that Edmonton’s loaded top line gave them in Game 2. And that has to be a point of emphasis for the Canucks in the lead-up to Game 3.
If Edmonton is going to make its already top-heavy lineup even more top heavy, then the onus falls on Vancouver’s middle-six players to decisively win their matchups and make the Oilers pay exorbitantly in non-McDavid minutes. Do enough damage, and you can chase the Oilers from this dynamic configuration as the series goes along.
The concern here, however, is that to this point in the playoffs the Elias Lindholm line with Conor Garland and Dakota Joshua hasn’t driven play at quite the same level that Vancouver’s ostensible third line did all season long (even as it’s become Vancouver’s second line in the postseason). And the Elias Pettersson line hasn’t been enough of a factor territorially or on the scoreboard to be a matchup nightmare, the way Vancouver is going to need them to be if Edmonton keeps Draisaitl and McDavid together.
That needs to change, and quickly, if the Canucks are going make Edmonton’s non-McDavid minutes painful ones for Knoblach and the Oilers.
Why the real problem is offence
Vancouver struggled to manufacture offence in the first round against the Nashville Predators.
Through two games against the Oilers, however, Vancouver has scored eight goals. Skinner has struggled, permitting a variety of key softies, while looking vulnerable laterally both off the rush and on in-zone play.
On Friday night, though, Vancouver scored on the power play, off a brilliant Boeser deflection four-on-four and off of an impossible-angle shot by Zadorov for the team’s lone five-on-five goal. Vancouver rarely threatened Edmonton at even strength, particularly in the third period.
This is where the cascading impact of uniting Draisaitl and McDavid on the Oilers’ top line is felt. The real risk to Vancouver isn’t that Draisaitl and McDavid will torch the Canucks, although, make no mistake, that’s part of it.
No, the real risk posed by Edmonton’s loaded top line is how it could limit the Canucks’ offensive output.
Through eight postseason games to this point, Vancouver has been wildly dependent on two forward lines to manufacture goals. Lindholm’s line has been on the ice for six goals, the Miller line has been on the ice for five (although it was Pettersson ont the ice on a partial change, instead of Miller, when Pius Suter scored the series winner in Round 1 against Nashville), and Vancouver’s other forward lines have been on the ice for just two combined goals.
If the Oilers are going to roll with Draisaitl and McDavid as a duo at five-on-five, and why wouldn’t they, then Vancouver is going to face a difficult decision. Unless Vancouver can find a way to make Edmonton’s top duo play in the defensive end, an incredibly tall order, Tocchet is either going to have to reconfigure his lineup or punt on getting offence from one of the two forward lines the Canucks have that reliably threaten to score.
Consider that Miller played nearly 15 minutes head-to-head with McDavid in Game 2. The Oilers didn’t actually generate a goal in those minutes, which is a testament to how well Vancouver defended with their top-line centre on the ice.
The problem, however, is that the Oilers out-attempted Vancouver 25-4 in those minutes and outshot them 12-1. If Miller is going to spend most of his ice time chasing McDavid and Draisaitl around the ice in the defensive zone, then he’s not going to be shooting through layered traffic, finding seams as a playmaker or scoring goals with throwback power-forward moves off of the rush.
And a series in which the Miller-Boeser line isn’t a threat to generate scoring chances and goals at five-on-five isn’t a series Vancouver is going to win.
Possible lineup tweaks
Perhaps the Canucks give it another game, or at least part of Game 3, to see if Miller and Boeser can stem the territorial tide before considering a more drastic change to their lineup.
If Tocchet and assistant coach Adam Foote, who runs Vancouver’s defence corps, opt to make some changes, however, here’s an overview of what options are available:
- The club could stick with Miller as the primary matchup for McDavid, but alter the five-man unit at the top of the lineup. If the Miller line is deployed with the Quinn Hughes-Filip Hronek pair instead of the Soucy-Myers pair, maybe Vancouver can spend more time defending the loaded version of the McDavid line by playing keep away in the offensive zone than they were able to manage in Game 2. It’s worth a shot, although Tocchet and Foote may be wary of trying this option, given the Hughes-Hronek pair would be at a size disadvantage against a trio of forwards who like to work the puck below the hashmarks.
- Vancouver could keep its lineup the same, but alter the matchups. In this scenario Vancouver would try Lindholm’s line as the primary head-to-head matchup for McDavid and Draisaitl, although Tocchet won’t have as much say in Game 3 and Game 4 without last change. This would theoretically free up the Miller line to do more damage against Edmonton’s makeshift second line centred by Ryan Nugent-Hopkins. One possible downside worth noting is that McDavid succeeded significantly when matched head-to-head with Lindholm in the postseason a couple years ago when the Oilers eliminated the Calgary Flames in six games in the second round.
- Beyond that, the options get a bit grim. The Canucks could try to punt the matchup outright by designing an all-defence forward line designed to merely limit the damage while playing in the defensive end against McDavid and company. Lindholm, Joshua, Ilya Mikheyev, Teddy Blueger and Suter would be candidates to staff this type of line. Punting can work, but it’s usually a dicey proposition. It also saps some of the “incremental territorial wins that compound one on top of the other until you wear down your opponent” logic that has keyed Vancouver’s surprising rise this season.
Tocchet and the Canucks need to find answers quickly. If what we saw from Edmonton’s top line in Game 2 shapes this series, Vancouver’s path to victory will get narrow in a hurry.
(Photo: Derek Cain / Getty Images)
