Hello, Houston. It’s Apollo 97 here again. We think we have a fix for our re-entry problem. Mission is ‘go’ again.
While it totally goes against the old saying, ‘If it’s not broke, don’t fix it’, Edmonton Oilers coach Dave Tippett said he’s creating a new saying to fit the situation.
“If it’s not broke, you haven’t looked hard enough.”
It might be a good quote, but I’m not sure it’ll survive long as a ‘saying.’
When the Oilers took the ice Saturday night against the Columbus Blue Jackets, Tippett used his under-appreciated ‘third star’ Ryan Nugent-Hopkins to fix the Connor McDavid ‘helicopter line’ (no wings) problem.
He robbed from the rich, league-leading scorer Leon Draisaitl, to give The Nuge to poor Connor McDavid, who’d been left with a couple of plumbers to play with.
Despite the incredible success of the Draisaitl line, with Kailer Yamamoto and Nugent-Hopkins, Tippett decided they couldn’t go forward as a one-line hockey club again like they were prior to New Year’s Eve with McDavid and Draisaitl starring as the Dynamic Duo, before Yamamoto showed up to change everything.
So when they dropped the puck, it was McDavid with Nugent-Hopkins and Zack Kassian back after a seven game suspension and four-games of re-entry with the role of The Nuge now being played by newcomer Tyler Ennis.
James Neal and Andreas Athanasiou had been penciled in to be McDavid’s wingers upon re-entry but Neal had a pathetic performance returning to the McDavid line from injury. And trade deadline newcomer Athanasiou looked totally out of place in his auditions with McDavid, as well.
Athanasiou was dropped to the third line and Neal to the fourth.
I asked Tippett after the morning skate Saturday whether he’d just built a short-term bridge to wait on players getting up to speed and finding the form to play with McDavid, or if this might be the way they go the rest of the way.
The head coach stick-handled around that question.
“I don’t think it’s a bridge. I think we’re trying to find where they best fit. We’ve tried them with different mixes. I’m a big believer in that you’re line-up has to have rhythm in it. We’re trying to find the best rhythm in our lines possible,” he said. “When you add new players along with injured players coming back, you’re lineup gets kind of herky-jerky. We’re trying to find a lineup with some rhythm that we can run with for a little bit that we think will work.
“We’re trying to find some balance.”
“It goes back to adding some players. We knew it was going to take some time to see where everybody fit. We juggled some things around and had some different looks at things and as you go on, you’re just trying to find the right mix.
“That line has been so good, I’ve been hesitant to break them up. But where we’re at right now, I want to see if we can get better.”
But who breaks up arguably the best line in the league so far in 2020?
Since Dec. 31, Draisaitl leads the league in points with 49 with Nugent-Hopkins sitting fourth in the NHL with 39 and Yamamoto producing 24 points in the 24 games since he played since coming up from Bakersfield.
“We’ve got some other things I want to get better in our group. We know that line can be really good if we put them back together. And Connor has played some with Nugent-Hopkins and Kassian before. He’s familiar with that so we’ll see how that goes.”
Tippett got 25:35 minutes-per-game Oscar Klefbom back Saturday, which, if he doesn’t have re-entry problems, is a big fix on defence.
It’s an interesting point in proceedings as Tippett has his team so close and yet so far away from securing Edmonton’s second playoff appearance since going to Game 7 of the Stanley Cup final in 2006.
It’s one eye on today and one eye on the playoffs.
“Every day, we talk about: ‘Where are we today,’ and; ‘Where do we want to be two weeks from now?’ and; ‘Where do we want to be a month from now?
“It’s day to day, but it’s also preparations that you are putting into place to make sure that your team continues to improve and earns the right to be a playoff team and then have the wherewithal to play well in the playoffs.”
Having players return from injury and settle in after being obtained at the trade deadline is a big key to how this journey ends this season.
“We just went through a stretch where we were begging for guys and now we’re finally getting healthy. But we feel like we have a more veteran group here right now. We feel like when these players come back, we have the depth to compete with some of these teams you’d consider deep teams.
“We play a lot of games down the stretch in a short amount of time and then you get into the playoffs. If you think you’re going to get by with six defencemen, then you’re wrong. You need at least eight you know you can plug in at almost any time and I think we’re going to have nine that we can plug in.
“And forwards also. That’s kind of one of the reasons we’ve looked at J.J. (Jujhar Khaira) at centre here. We’re looking at our depth at centre in case we have run into some injury situations.”
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On Twitter: @ByTerryJones
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