What We Learned: What’s actually different for the Oilers under Jay Woodcroft?

A point was made on the Edmonton Oilers broadcast in Saturday’s comfortable win over a desperate, skilled Vegas Golden Knights team, that this was a game in which neither Connor McDavid nor Leon Draisaitl had a point. And yet the Oilers had scored four times, none into an empty net.

This happens in the NHL more than you might think. Maybe not to the Oilers, specifically, if we’re looking at long-term trends. But the point was well taken.

It managed to get me thinking about what we knew of the Oilers’ performance since their mid-February coaching change. It’s no secret that they’ve played a lot better with Jay Woodcroft behind the bench, but the extent to which they’ve improved is hard to overstate.

Not only are they 21-8-3 under the new guy (a big improvement from 23-18-3 with Dave Tippett), but almost all their underlying numbers have taken steps in the right direction as well.