Have the Oilers turned the corner under new coach Jay Woodcroft?

Justin Cuthbert breaks down the numbers behind the Oilers' encouraging start under their new head coach.

Video Transcript

JUSTIN CUTHBERT: --here, but also because the Oilers are playing pretty well here under Jay Woodcroft, or at least they are getting goaltending under Jay Woodcroft. They are 7 and 3 in the 10-game sample since they brought up their farmhand head coach. 36-25 on the aggregate scoreboard. Connor McDavid has 16 points in those 10 games, which is maybe closer to what he was doing last year than what he had been doing previously this year. Leon Draisaitl scoring enough to still have a share of the Rocket Richard lead.

All around, some real positive stuff. But what's most encouraging is that the numbers, the defensive structure, and more importantly, the support seems to be there for the netminders, or at least it seems, between Mike Smith, Mikko Koskinen, and a dash of Stuart Skinner. The Oilers have a 9.13 total save percentage under Woodcroft.

Now, that number is skewed by the fact that Mikko Koskinen is at 0.936, Smith just at 0.905, Smith with more starts so far. But overall, they're getting enough goaltending right now, and the goaltending that they weren't getting, at least in the final half or 22 games or so of the Dave Tippett era, or at least the third season of the Dave Tippett era.

I want to give Koskinen credit for a second. Of course, he's got the numbers recently. But he came out after one of his many tough outings and intimated that he wasn't getting enough support. He was blaming some of his players or some of his coaches for what looked like just poor performance on his part. When things weren't going well, he was looking to put the blame elsewhere.

But now that things are going well, he was first to point out that his success is partly due to improved structure and attention to team defense and the ability for the Oilers to cut down on shot quality, or at least the shot quality coming towards them, for him to be able to see the puck a little bit more efficiently.

So credit to him for just telling it like it is, I guess, on both sides of the equation, when things are both good and bad. And if you do listen to Koskinen, and if you do listen to the other players, at the end of the line for Tippet, and since Woodcroft took over, there's a difference. They sound better off. They sound like they have something to build on.

They're not complaining about whether or not they have the elements of team structure in their game. They're not blaming other things. They have answers because they've got something, it seems, to work on.

And for that reason, beyond the record, beyond having success, despite Ryan Nugent-Hopkins being Jesse Puljujarvi, both of which suffered injuries over the last 10 games, and despite Evander Kane's struggles, it seems like just those words, the atmosphere, the dialogue, that all seems, in addition to the record, validated the change, right?

Now, there are a couple of anomalies to consider beyond Koskinen and that 0.936, which should not last, one of which is Leon Draisaitl has a negative expected goals on ice ratio at present moment in these 10 games. But he's 9 and 0 in terms of on-ice real goal differential. So you'd probably see a little bit of a regression there.

Derek Ryan leads the team in goals. He has 5 even strength goals in 10 games. This is a non-scorer normally. So a couple of things that can't continue, but a couple of things, like the return of Nuge, the return of Puljujarvi, Evander Kane getting it going, that should result in some positive regression.

So it's still TBD. Nothing is going to be set in stone after 10 games. But I think with certainty, we can say that this change, the change at coach needed to happen and that the Oilers actually have a fighting chance now that they made that change.