A common theme when analyzing what happens on the ice is that the Oilers, as a team, seem to be pretty terrible at a couple of aspects of hockey that are very easily correctable. With a couple of exceptions, the Oilers are pretty lousy at on ice communication. When talking about communication, I don’t just mean talking to each other (which is tough to gauge without being on the ice), but also physical clues, which are just as important. When the arena is loud, it can be hard to hear your defenceman when he says to switch off, or to pick up the man on the right, so you need to also use physical clues like hand and stick gestures. We’re not talking about complex signs like we're landing an aircraft, but rather simple gestures like pointing.

Another skill that seems to be missing on this team is awareness of their surroundings (aka vision). Too often the players have on horse blinders and don’t bother to look around and see who is around. Offensively speaking, the difference between being okay and being good is often the ability to sneak in a look here and there at what is happening around you. When you see Ryan Nugent-Hopkins make a seemingly blind backhand pass through traffic to a wide open player, you can rewind the play and see that a couple of seconds earlier he glanced up to see the player heading to that area. Defensively speaking, it’s an absolutely critical skill to have just to be an adequate player. The ability to take your eyes off the puck and look for the other outlets is often the difference in keeping the puck out of the net.

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Corey Potter has had an up and down season with the Oilers. He stepped in at the beginning of the year and did a remarkable job not just as a regular part of the defensive rotation, but also on the PP.

Lately though, things have been a bit rough for him. He missed significant time due to an injury, he Frankenstein’d Taylor Hall during a freak accident in warm up, and his on-ice play has tailed off.

One of the most significant problems he’s had is his defensive play on the rush. It isn’t that he’s getting beat by skaters, he’s just constantly finding himself in bad situations and having to react to a play instead of seeing it develop.

Coach Nielsen does a pretty good job breaking down the defenseman’s responsibilities on the 2 on 1. The Key points are as follows:

• The D’s Initial Positioning is between the attackers.
• The D should have one hand on his stick and the stick extended from the body.
• The D must keep their head on a swivel to check the positioning off the puck.
• The stick can be used to push the puck carrier wider or lure him into making a pass before he’s ready.
• As play progresses below the tops of the circles, the stick should be pointed a bit more toward the puck carrier than directly in front of the body to cut down on the space between stick and skates that attacker could use to pass the puck.

I'll use a recent example against the Chicago Blackhawks to demonstrate some of Potter's deficiencies in this situation.

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The final minute of a close hockey game often sees the trailing team pull their goalie for an extra attacker. As the defending team, you have to make sure that you make full use of every advantage you have.

The first advantage is the clock. They only have a limited amount of time left to score and every second they spend not scoring benefits the defending team.

The second advantage is desperation. The opposition is going to send players after the puck to prevent it from leaving the zone. Often times this is going to create areas in the zone that are going to be open, which will allow an opportunity to clear the puck.

The 3rd advantage is that even though you have 1 less player than the opposition, you still have 5. You now have an extra player to do the same things you’d normally do on the PK.

Now featuring diagram-y goodness!

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Several weeks ago, I looked at the basic premise behind cycling the puck, which focused mostly on how to support the puck positionally. Holding the puck in the other teams end helps prevent them from scoring, but that’s only part of the game.

Generating offense from the cycle has many of the same philosophies as generating offense on the PP or on the rush: It’s all about creating shooting and passing lanes.

Generally speaking there are 2 ways you go about creating a scoring chance on the cycle. The first is having the puck carrier attack the net while the support players fan out and provide an outlet or attack if their man focuses on the puck carrier. The second is through transitions where the offensive players transition between high and low or across the zone to create a shooting lane.

When you attack the net with the puck, it’s usually because you’ve managed to get a step on the guy covering you or there’s enough space where you aren’t in much danger of having the opposition double team you.

As you drive to the net, your teammates want to keep the players covering them away from you. If one of the defensive players tries to provide help, your winger then wants to find a soft spot in the coverage for either a pass or to come in and attack the net while the other team is facing the wrong way.

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For those wondering, part 2 of cycling the puck is still in progress. Basement (insert your favourite blogger joke), renovations have managed to eat away most of my free time over the past month and sap what little free time I have that didn’t involve watching the Oilers (not even my wife’s dirtiest look will convince me to stop watching them).

In order to help break up the posts about the WJHC and how badly the Wild may or may not suck, I want to take a quick look at the Oilers ability (or lack thereof) to win face-offs on the power play. As it stands right now, Shawn Horcoff is currently sitting at a 47.5% success rate while the Oilers are on the PP, and that’s well below what the 55% you’d expect.

Part of winning a face-off is the ability of the centre which includes strength, speed, savvy and other "s" words that sound endearing. The other part of winning a face-off is the ability of your teammates to win puck battles. One of the reasons you expect your face-off percentage to increase while on the PP is that you out number your opposition and therefore have more players to engage and win a puck battle.

Due to the fact TV producers have decided that face-offs are less important than random shots of the crowd while they try and promote tickets versus a team no one wants to watch, I hadn’t really noticed what was happening on the Oilers PP face-offs (specifically the ones with the 1st PP unit).

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The cycle is an integral part of hockey, especially at the NHL level. The purpose behind it is to allow you to maintain control of the puck while you attempt to break down your opposition’s defence in order to generate a scoring chance.

This week will be a bit of a primer on the cycle, focusing primarily on positioning for support as well as where to look for outlets. Next week will be more in depth, focusing on how break down the opposition by using the cycle.

Much like the 1-2-2 forecheck from last week, the triangle is an integral part of the cycle. Not only does it provide outlets, but it ensures that help in the form of a second man is close by as well as proper defensive coverage in case of a turn over.

If you are into diagrams, this is your day. There might be more diagrams than words.

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For a bit of a change of pace, instead of looking at what happened in over the past week in Oiler games I’m going to switch focus and talk about the forecheck in general.

The primary goal of the forecheck isn’t to necessarily force a turnover, but rather disrupt the opposition’s breakout. Aside from various formation types (1-2-2, 2-1-2, 1-3-1, etc...), the other main aspect of the forecheck are your pressure points. Simply put, these refer to the areas of the ice where you want to apply pressure on the puck carrier.

The important thing to consider when deciding on your formation and pressure points is that the further into the zone that you designate your pressure points and the more forecheckers you send, the more potential open there is behind your forecheckers.

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Hitting has always found a high place in hockey lore. It's been said that big punishing hits can change the momentum of games, intimidate opponents and even win playoff series. When a team is in a slump, physical play is often cited as the reason why a team is losing and a method for them to turn the ship around. The problem is, sometimes you try and increase your physical play at the expense of playing hockey. Physical play has a role in hockey but it's important to always play to the strengths of your team, no matter what kind of game the other team is playing. The same Edmonton Oilers team that scored 15 goals in 2 games is the same team that was badly out played in a 4-1 loss to Dallas, yet the narrative after seemed to be that the Oilers weren't physical enough in the loss to Dallas. The Oilers were credited with 33 hits in the Dallas loss, which is more hits than the Nashville and Chicago games combined (beware scorers bias).

This Oilers hockey team is not a team that will wear you down with body contact. Their best bet to win every night is to out skate the opposition (which is a combination of actual skating as well as faster puck movement). This team has a lot of players who can make plays at top speed and it's important for them to play at that speed and not get involved in a hitting contest.

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