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From Lowetide’s HFesque 6-2-1 revelry thread:

The team must have a great locker-room right now given a) the wins and b) how well they’re compensating for each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Some stats might be unsustainable, but honestly, those can be compensated for as well.

Me? I look at the last 9 games and rather than seeing unsustainable numbers or a weak schedule I see proof that it’s at least possible for the team to play and/or win at this level. They might fail miserably, or they might take the div/cup, but at this point they’ve at least shown that they *can* hit that top end, and frankly, that’s all I care about.

The Oilers have been outshot 300-226 to date. I’ve had my head buried in other matters, but about all you can take from the results to date is that any team can get results in a short period. You can get a quick and dirty feel for this by just adding up a team’s save percentage and shooting percentage for a given span of games. The Bruins led the league in shooting percentage and save percentage last year; they added up to 103.4%. The Oilers are currently at 107.3%. I haven’t seen enough games to really have any opinions about what’s going on but you don’t make the playoffs like this. The shooting rates will presumably get closer over time; 300-226 is horrific, but it’ll take a lot to make up for the percentages falling back to earth. Gabe Desjardins has a fine post along the same lines here.

The record’s all fine and well and the Oilers are close enough that the bounces are probably going to be the difference between making and missing the playoffs, so this may well prove to be an important stretch, but anyone advancing an argument that this has anything to do with the coaching change is effectively arguing that the coaching change is driving the shooting percentage to a ridiculous level. It just does not work this way. At this stage of the year, the points matter but as far as telling us something about the team, the shots ratio is probably the most relevant indicator and it’s not good.

Guy Flaming’s been running a series at his site, Coming Down the Pipe! that evaluates the job that Kevin Prendergast has done over the past few years. It’s pretty entertaining stuff - click here for Part One, Part Two and Part Three.

As most people reading this will know, Flaming has written about Oilers prospects for a long time at Hockey’s Future. He has worked and achieved access to Oilers scouts and, as a result, Oilers fans have benefitted from commentary that most fans don’t get about their teams. On the other hand, access has a price and I’ve never really been wild about Flaming’s stuff because I’ve always found his views to be more than a little bit breathless and, reading it, I’ve always thought that he let his sources get away with expressing some views that didn’t make any sense if you thought about them.

I could never quite understand whether Guy was giving us his views or the Oilers’ views and I always had the sense that, in any event, his views were pretty heavily coloured by those of the team. Every piece seemed to have a passage that screamed for some sort of a reality check. Access to the Oilers staff is great, but if what you get is press release-type stuff to the effect that Schremp is more talented than Ovechkin, I’m not sure how valuable it is, other than it helps set you up with some writing gigs and keeps you in guests for your radio show. There’s a reason Larry King gets such great guests.

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