Oilers' Brett Kulak Is New Top Defender

EDMONTON -- Sometimes, it takes great adversity to discover what a team and a player are made of.

The Edmonton Oilers have not had a smooth ride. The beginning of the 2024-25 season is off to a similar start as the 2023-24 season. However, luck has been more kind to them despite the putrid effectiveness of the penalty kill and poor shooting percentage.

But that luck has seemingly changed.

Surprisingly, Brett Kulak is leading the charge. The 30-year-old defender is proving his worth in more ways than one.

Last night against the Vancouver Canucks, his goal put a pin in any attempt at a comeback for the losing team. The goal was his fourth of the year, putting him two back of his career high set in the 2018-19 season.

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Kulak is producing at a 0.4-points-per-game pace. That would have him finish the year with 33 points.

His current career high is 21.

Last night, he played 20:03, Which was the sixth time he had played at least 20 minutes in the previous eight games. He averages 18:26 of ice time per game, the highest of his career. That's also three minutes more per game than he played last season.

The fancy stats are also playing in his favor.

Dangerous Fenwick for Percentage (DFF%) is an advanced stat similar to Corsi For Percentage, but it considers the shot's distance and the type of shot to assign it a "danger" value.

According to PuckIQ, Kulak has the second-best DFF% on the team, with 60.9%. Mattias Ekholm holds the top spot with 62.4, with Evan Bouchard behind Kulak at 60.2. But it doesn't end there.

Kulak is getting better results against elite competition than any other Oilers defender. In 73.5 minutes, he has a 68.7 DFF% against elites. Darnell Nurse (59.1), Ekholm (56.4), and Bouchard (55.3) have all played against elites more, yet have yielded worse results.

In fact, Kulak has the best DFF% against elites in the entire league, who have played at least 60 minutes against elite competition.

Kulak has only played 29.6 % of his ice time against elites. With these results and the offensive production as a bonus, something tells me that his time-on-ice boost will continue growing in the coming weeks and months.

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