A statistical review of the Red Wings' 8-4 loss to Edmonton, featuring a look at Connor McDavid, Evan Bouchard, Alex Lyon, Joe Veleno and Mo Seider.
A statistical review of the Red Wings' 8-4 loss to Edmonton, featuring a look at Connor McDavid, Evan Bouchard, Alex Lyon, Joe Veleno and Mo Seider.
On the heels of a comeback home win against Vancouver, the Red Wings stumbled out of the gate to start their four-game road trip with an 8-4 loss in Edmonton. For a clearer sense of how Detroit lost this game, let’s review the underlying numbers that defined the game.
The Big Picture
Per MoneyPuck.com, Detroit led by a fair margin in expected goals 4.11-3.58 across all situations. This is somewhat believable considering the number of shots the Red Wings generated, including a many that came off a royal road pass. Even more interesting, Detroit only trailed in xG for about seven minutes in the first period — the rest of the way, it generated far more looks. A lot of this goes back to the Red Wings’ power play, which scored twice on three tries.
Despite giving up two early goals — and juggling some goalie change due to Ville Husso’s aggravated lower body injury — the Red Wings ran away with this game early on. Instead of shadowing Connor McDavid’s line with the Dylan Larkin-led first line, Detroit instead mismatched its top line against the Oilers’ weaker depth. This worked for the opening five minutes, until some unfavorable bounces, including a puck of Mo Seider’s skate, put Edmonton in the driver’s seat. And from there on, McDavid took over this game in usual fashion.
That takeover really showed up in the third period, when the Red Wings let up four unanswered goals to all but ice the game. The expected goals aren’t favorable either — the Oilers led 1.664-0.499 until Detroit mustered a response via David Perron. Really, this ties back to Edmonton’s domination of 5-on-5 play from the second intermission on. The Oilers led 1.473-0.582 in 5-on-5 xG during the third period.
Individual Impacts
In a game where he scored six assists including his 600th, Connor McDavid only generated 0.07 xG because he didn’t shoot the puck. Rather, he set up linemates Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Zach Hyman. That line racked up 1.638 xG at a xG for rate of 66.8%. Their Corsi percentage landed at 68.4%. While Detroit won the battle in keeping McDavid from shooting, they lost the war when he dunked assist after assist after milestone assist.
A lot of the credit can also go to the Mattias Ekholm and Evan Bouchard defense pairing, which accounted for 2.371 xG, or 66% of their team’s total offense. Bouchard's night continues what has been a career year for the fifth-year Oiler. Alongside Ekholm's steady defensive presence, Bouchard has more leash to get involved on offense, and he made use of this Tuesday with a three-point night.
Part of Detroit’s issue in this game stemmed from a lack of success in net. Alex Lyon bore the brunt of the minutes coming in for the injured Husso, and he really struggled with a -4.28 goals saved above expected. Many of these chances stemmed from medium-danger threats that the McDavid line excelled at generating.
After the game, a HockeyStatCards published a data visualization that showed the brunt of the blame for Detroit’s performance on Mo Seider, with an on-ice game score so far negative that it threw off the scaling of the graph.
However, some of these struggles also came from the Ben Chiarot and Jeff Petry pairing, which generated a 37.5 Corsi percentage and controlled just 28.3% of the expected goals across their team-leading 21:09 ice time together.
Klim Kostin’s return to the lineup also didn’t go as well as he likely hoped. His fourth line alongside Joe Veleno and Daniel Sprong. The trio generated 0.164 expected goals while surrendering 0.611. Out of all four lines, they had the worst night overall.
Finally, Veleno stood out for the Red Wings in a good way, wreaking havoc at the net front on the power play. Overall, he generated 0.95 xG on his lonesome, amounting to 23% of his team’s offense. It certainly helped that Patrick Kane and Alex DeBrincat shared the second unit with him — and Detroit coach Derek Lalonde even tried that trio at even strength in the first period.
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