Edmonton Oilers put some 'special' back into lackluster special teams
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The only thing special about the Edmonton Oilers special teams to open the NHL playoffs was just how especially bad they were.
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Remarkably non-existent, in fact, to the point where it left you wondering why they even bothered showing up for the post-season in the first place.
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If you don't have a power-play putting points on the right side of the board, and a penalty kill that can keep points off the wrong side, then you're not going to last very long. Period.
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Take last year's Oilers, for instance. They took a special-teams-powered trip all the way to the finish line, Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final, with a second-ranked power play of 29.3 per cent, while their penalty kill stole the show at a 94.3 per cent pace that was as close to perfect as it gets, allowing just four goals on 70 opportunities across 25 playoff games.
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Fast-forward to this year, and it took them all of two games to eclipse that total, allowing five goals in their first 111 minutes of post-season play. The struggle is real.
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And it cost the Oilers losses of 6-5 and 6-2 to fall behind 0-2 to the Los Angeles Kings in what was shaping up to be a disappointing early exit on the heels of the longest run you can take a spring ago.
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They were 0-for-4 on the power play, and 5-for-10 on the penalty kill before the power play showed up in Game 3, going 2-for-2 in a 7-4 victory, while allowing goals on both man-advantages for L.A.
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But Edmonton's penalty kill showed up in full force, going 3-for-3 in a 4-3 overtime win in Game 4, while the power play cashed in twice on three opportunities in a performance echoing last year's team.
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The Oilers went a solid 1-for-3 on the power play and 4-for-5 on the penalty kill over the next two games to win the series in six.
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They head into Round 2 against the Vegas Golden Knights on Tuesday (7:30 p.m., Sportsnet) with a power play sitting eighth overall at 28.6 per cent, and a penalty kill ranked dead last of all playoff teams at just 41.7 per cent — a full 20 percentage points behind the next-worst team, for reference.
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But things have certainly turned a corner since,, with the power play back on track (5-for-8 over the past four games) and a penalty kill that has allowed a single goal on eight opportunities over the past three games.
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'I thought it started with the kill just getting a little bit desperate,' said Oilers captain Connor McDavid. 'Picks (Calvin Pickard) made some great saves on there, I thought the kill did a great job. I thought the power play ultimately ended in a pretty good spot, maybe it didn't look that way or feel that way, but we capitalized when it mattered.
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