Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Who's Going to Be on the Powerplay?

With so much injected offense, the Oilers suddenly have a plethora of options on the powerplay. Before we all start jumping to conclusions based on overall point outputs and flashiness, let's look at some stats. Here's the PP points/60 minutes breakdown for last season for some of the more prominent PP players:

ALES HEMSKY 5.93
DUSTIN PENNER 4.07
SHAWN HORCOFF 4.00
SAM GAGNER 3.88
TOM GILBERT 3.01
FERNANDO PISANI 2.94
ROBERT NILSSON 2.66
ANDREW COGLIANO 2.52
SHELDON SOURAY 1.72
DENISGREBESHKOV 1.26

LUBOMIR VISNOVSKY 2.77
ERIK COLE 3.13

Here are some things to consider:
-Gagner played the 2nd half with the top unit
-Visnovsky played all year at the LEFT point, he was at 7.0 p/60 the season before on the right
-Souray played more PP minutes than anyone when healthy, yet had the lowest output
-Cole was barely good enough to crack the 2nd unit with the Canes
-Grebeshkov played 2nd unit all year
-Gilbert played 1st unit in the 2nd half
-Pisani played 2nd unit since he came back, had the highest totals of any 2nd unit player

Considering all this, I propose these:

First Unit
Penner Gagner Hemsky
Souray Visnovsky


Second Unit
Pisani Horcoff Nilsson
Cole Gilbert

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