Breaking down key 5-on-5 line matchups for the Oilers as they head back to Los Angeles

With a 4-3 overtime victory on Sunday night, the Edmonton Oilers have tied their first-round series against the Los Angeles Kings. The Kings won the first two games of the series in Los Angeles, but the Oilers emerged victorious in the next two games in Edmonton. 

Thus far, Los Angeles leads 11 to 9 in 5-on-5 goals in this series. Though a major part of this is goaltending, the skater group certainly has room to improve, as they are generating fewer scoring chances and allowing more against in comparison to their regular-season rates. 

As the team heads back to LA, one factor that could have a major role in Edmonton’s 5-on-5 results, and the series overall, is the forward line match-ups. Here’s a detailed breakdown.

A summary of the first four games at 5-on-5

Kings coach Jim Hiller has primarily deployed the same top-nine forward lines for his team throughout all four games of this series thus far, with Moore – Danault – Foegele (LA’s defensive shutdown line), Laferriere – Byfield – Fiala, and Kempe – Kopitar – Kuzmenko. Interestingly, he has hardly deployed LA’s fourth line, as the remainder of LA’s forwards have averaged just 3-4 minutes per game in this series. 

In Game 1 of the series, there was quite a lot of line shuffling from Kris Knoblauch throughout the game, but generally, Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, and Adam Henrique each centred their own lines. McDavid was primarily matched against Danault, while Draisaitl and RNH primarily played against Kopitar and Byfield’s lines. 

The good news was that Draisaitl’s line decisively controlled play against both Kopitar (+1, 80 xG%) and Byfield (+2, 82 xG%). The bad news is that Danault effectively shut down McDavid’s line at 5-on-5 away from Draisaitl (-1, 37 xG%), and RNH’s line was out-shot and out-chanced against all three of LA’s top-nine lines.

In Game 2, Knoblauch elected to load up the top line with McDavid and Draisaitl. Danault was hard-matched against them all night, and although Edmonton’s dynamic duo were up 8 to 0 in scoring chances in those minutes, the rest of the team suffered as a result. RNH and Henrique – moved up to 2C and 3C respectively – badly lost the goal and shot battle to Kopitar and Byfield’s lines, which, combined with Skinner’s goaltending and the awful penalty-kill, resulted in a blowout victory for LA.

Throughout Game 3, the lines were quite often shuffled around yet again, but what’s noteworthy here is that Knoblauch did a good job at utilizing the last change. Knoblauch matched McDavid primarily against Kopitar’s line, and he absolutely crushed those minutes, scoring two goals and holding an excellent 12 to 3 scoring chance ratio. It was Henrique’s line that played against Danault, and although Henrique struggled in those minutes, McDavid’s dominance against Kopitar was enough to ultimately outweigh it.

Finally, for Game 4, McDavid and Draisaitl spent the majority of their time together, and interestingly, Knoblauch had no issue putting them up against Danault. It certainly worked out, as the duo held a 77 percent xG% share and scored the team’s lone 5-on-5 goal of the night against Danault’s line. However, Henrique’s line struggled considerably in the minutes he spent against Byfield and Danault.

How should the Oilers deploy and match their lines for the rest of the series?

With Game 5 heading back to Los Angeles, and with the Kings getting the last change, the Oilers seem to have four realistic options here.

The first option is to load up the top line. It’s easy to see why this option is enticing, as they can dominate regardless of what line they match up against. However, the main case against this option is the fact that loading up the top line simply leaves the rest of the team far too vulnerable. 

RNH is just not a 2C at this stage of his career, Henrique has mightily struggled in the 3C role throughout the season, and both of them are likely to be crushed against Kopitar and especially Byfield’s line. There would just be far too much pressure on McDavid and Draisaitl to outright win the game, because if those two aren’t firing on all cylinders, a victory is unlikely.

The second option is to run McDavid, Draisaitl, and Henrique down the middle and deploy RNH on the wing, which is what the Oilers did for the beginning of Games 3 and 4. The RNH – McDavid – Hyman line does have a strong track record of success, and of course, Draisaitl is monumentally superior to RNH as a 2C. 

But my concern with this option is Henrique. With Hiller expected to hard-match Danault against McDavid, one of Kopitar or Byfield’s lines will have to play against Henrique, and that’s a matchup that could easily cost the Oilers a goal or two.

The third option is to let McDavid, Draisaitl, RNH and Henrique centre their own lines. This option should be strongly considered, as not only do the Oilers now have the winger group to run this deployment, but running McDavid, Draisaitl, and RNH down the middle allows Edmonton to be best suited to counter LA’s top-nine, and Henrique at 4C is an added bonus considering LA isn’t really deploying their fourth line.

Finally, the fourth option is to run 11 forwards and 7 defencemen. With this option, the Oilers have much more line flexibility amongst their forwards and defencemen, it allows McDavid and Draisaitl to double-shift in key instances, and it’s much more difficult for opponents to consistently handle and predict.

Each of these options has its various pros and cons, but I would lean towards either the third or fourth ones. We’ll see what Kris Knoblauch eventually decides.

Game 5 will be at 8:00 PM MT tonight. Time for Edmonton to take the lead for the first time in the series.