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Tuesday, May 6, 2025 | 2 a.m.
The Golden Knights have spent the last few days talking up the Edmonton Oilers’ supposed newfound depth ahead of the teams’ second-round Stanley Cup Playoffs series.
Don’t buy into any of it.
It smacks of gamesmanship for Vegas to praise the mediocre-at-best bottom of the Edmonton lineup.
Granted, the Golden Knights are highly unlikely to influence how the Oilers approach the matchup strategically in any way. But it’s worth hyping up opposing role players if there’s even the most minuscule chance it assists in getting them on the ice longer and believing they can challenge the Golden Knights’ counterparts.
Because the truth is, the Oilers can’t come close to matching the Golden Knights’ depth.
The fate of the best-of-seven series, which begins at 6:30 tonight at T-Mobile Arena, will come down to what’s more prolific between Edmonton’s superstar duo of Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl or Vegas’ wave of difference-making players.
The rosters have changed slightly on both sides, but it’s not all that much different from when these two teams met in this round of the 2023 postseason and Vegas escaped with a six-game series victory.
“You’ve got two guys that play a terrific two-man game so it’s full alert,” Golden Knights coach Bruce Cassidy said of McDavid and Draisaitl. “That probably means they’re going to the bench together so it’s time to make hay against the rest of the lines if you feel you have the depth advantage. I think that was a bit of the story two years ago.”
Vegas looks ready to pick up right where it left off against Edmonton in that series based on the first round of this year’s playoffs. The Golden Knights’ six-game series win over the Minnesota Wild wasn’t pristine — they were actually outscored by a goal overall — but they pulled away largely by virtue of winning the minutes when both teams’ best players were off the ice.
Vegas’ third-line scored the Game 4-winning goal in overtime when recently demoted winger Ivan Barbashev attacked the net alongside new playing partners Nicolas Roy and Reilly Smith.
The fourth line did the overtime honors in Game 5 when an ill Brett Howden, whom Cassidy had recently shifted to center, blasted a shot into the net. He cashed in on a pass from behind the net by Tanner Pearson, who had been a healthy scratch in the first three games of the series.
“I’m always pleased with our depth,” Cassidy said. “I think that’s why we’re a first-place team. We need our best players to play well, don’t get me wrong, (but) we’re comfortable using different people in certain spots and feel they’ll respond.”
In fairness, utilizing depth efficiently also factored into the Oilers dispatching the Los Angeles Kings in six games in their opening-round series.
Edmonton’s bottom-six forwards actually accounted for an impressive seven goals and 19 points — more than Vegas’ tally of six goals and 10 points.
But it’s worth noting the pair of series were played totally different stylistically with the Oilers-Kings showdown producing 20 more total goals than the Golden Knights-Wild managed.
Six postseason games also shouldn’t overtake a full-season sample anyway. Coming into the playoffs, the Oilers were perceived to be more vulnerable than the last couple years because of the rest of the roster’s failure to adequately complement McDavid and Draisaitl.
It’s debatable how much really changed in the series victory over the Kings.
Long-time secondary-contributing linemates Zach Hyman and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins looked revitalized, but Edmonton was still almost entirely outplayed when its top two forward groups were off the ice.
The Oilers had a negative expected-goal percentage when five of their bottom six forwards were on the ice. The only exception was former Golden Knight center Mattias Janmark, who scored a pair of goals himself.
Barbashev, Reilly Smith and Victor Olofsson, who was benched in two games, were all positive in expected-goal percentage while on the ice for the Golden Knights.
The discrepancy between the two sides’ first-round advanced statistics fits with the season-long data.
Edmonton has seven healthy players with a positive net rating on the year per Evolving Hockey with defenseman Evan Bouchard, Darnell Nurse and Jake Walman joining the four aforementioned forwards.
The Golden Knights have 11 healthy players with a positive net rating on the year including six forwards, four defenseman and goalie Adin Hill.
First-line center Jack Eichel is unsurprisingly their No. 1 rated performer in the metric, but he’s still produced only a fraction of the value of McDavid (the reigning regular-season and playoff most valuable player award-winner) and Draisaitl (a finalist for the most valuable player this regular season and former winner).
Cassidy plans to throw whatever he can to slow down the duo, but he acknowledges there are no easy answers.
“I’ll say this: I’m not a huge line-match guy, so to me it’s not going to change a lot of what we’re going to do but there are exceptions to every rule,” he said. “They have a couple of players who are exceptions to the rule. You’re keeping an eye on that. No disrespect to the rest of the group but those guys are MVPs of the league so you have to be mindful of when they’re coming over the boards to kind of try to get the matchups you prefer.”
Cassidy praised Eichel as having a coming-of-age superstar moment in the 2023 playoff meeting by not only chipping in three goals against the Oilers but more importantly playing lockdown defense on McDavid and Draisaitl down the stretch.
Hill also had a career-making series, coming off the bench for the injured Laurent Brossoit in Game 2 and going on to stymie the Oilers in three of the next four contests.
Vegas’ advantage with Hill in the crease should be significant this time around, with Edmonton having benched starter Stuart Skinner against Los Angeles and turning to career backup/former Golden Knight Calvin Pickard.
There are more edges in the Golden Knights’ favor overall, and they’ll need those to prevail past the Oilers’ overpowering top-level talent.
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