'Skill and talent': NHL stats analysts with high praise for Oilers defencemen

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This in from TSN stats analyst and hockey writer Travis Yost, his ranking of NHL defences, where he places the Edmonton Oilers in the top tier.

Said Yost of the Oilers: “The goaltending can terrify you on any given night but a key reason why the Oilers have emerged as perennial Stanley Cup contenders – OK, setting aside the two-headed monster of Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl – is a deepening of skill and talent on the blueline. You need puck movers capable of igniting an attack with this collection of forwards, and Edmonton has that in spades – now featuring one of the best trade deadline acquisitions of the 2024-25 season in Jake Walman.”

Other teams in Yost’s Top Tier include Colorado, Carolina, Dallas and Ottawa.

Yost analysis follows the work of another strong stats analyst Dom Luszczyszyn of The Athletic, who recently did valuations of players on all 32 NHL teams (essentially translating each player’s individual performance into a dollar amount) and found that the Oilers have the most high-performing and valuable d-man unit in the entire NHL.

Of the Top 60 highest performing d-men in the NHL, the Oilers had four, as per Luszczyszyn’s model, with Evan Bouchard ranked seventh, Mattias Ekholm 16th, Jake Walman 29th and Darnell Nurse 52nd. Top ranked was Colorado’s Cale Makar at $15.4 million.

Edmonton’s Top 6 d-men were valued, on average at $7.2 million each, with the next most valuable d-men on Montreal, $6.7 million, Colorado, $6.5 million. (For the Habs, I had to estimate Lane Hutson’s value, as Luszczyszyn does not rate Entry Level Contracts in this post on contract efficiency).

Luszczyszyn values Bouchard at $12.8 million, Ekholm, $9.8 million, Walman, $7.9 million, Nurse, $6.5 million, Kulak, $3.9 million and Ty Emberson at $2.5 million.

My take

1. For the many wretched years of the Decade of Darkness-plus, the Oilers defence was the blackest of holes, with iffy players like Mark Fayne, Corey Potter, Cam Barker, Theo Peckham, Martin Marincin, Kurtis Foster and Nikita Nikitin often thrust into Top 4 roles at even strength.  Especially lacking during those darkest times were d-men who could move the puck. But now almost every Oilers d-man is above average-to-top tier when it comes to puck moving.

2. The Oilers d-men still make a significant number of mistakes on defence, but their passing ability has shot up since the last rancid season of that horrible decade, 2017-18.

As recently as the 2021-22 season, the d-men averaged as a group 0.9 major contributions to Grade A shots per 15 minutes of play. This past season, 2024-25, that average was at 1.3 major contributions per 15.

The Oil d-men are sharp-eyed, deft-handed, sharp-passing puck movers, almost all able to efficiently get the puck on the tape of forwards on break-outs, if not hit them with long bomb stretch passes.

Bouchard led the way with 1.93 major contributions to Grade A shots per 15 even strength minutes, then Walman at 1.63, Ekholm, 1.5, John Klingberg 1.46, Nurse, 1.4, Kulak, 0.94, Emberson, 0.84 and Troy Stecher at 0.81.

3. As Yost notes, Oilers GM Stan Bowman’s trade for Jake Walman was a winner, especially as Walman has one more year left on his contract $3.4 million per season. That deal represents incredible value for the Oilers this year.

4. Can this group keep up the great work? Bouchard is in his prime as an NHLer, as are Walman and Nurse for the next few years. Ekholm is more of question mark, given he got hurt last year and he’s now 35, the age by which almost all NHL d-men fall of a cliff in terms of performance. Maybe he can be an exception to the rule.

5. It’s also the case that Bowman might be able to swoop in and grab another to puck-mover in a trade this year. Emberson could also improve that aspect of his game. He’ll need to in order two in steady work on this blueline.

6. When it comes to prospects, if Beau Akey can get healthy and put in a few good years in Bakersfield, he might be able to step up. Bowman also signed 26-year-old Finnish puck moving sensation Atro Leppanen, who had 63 points in 60 games in the top league in Finland last year.

D-men at that age only rarely succeed when they came over to the NHL, but that was a monster year from Leppanen so perhaps he’ll be the exception to the rule.

For now, the Oilers have plenty of d-men who can move that puck exceedingly well.

Enjoy it while it lasts, my friends. That’s my plan.

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