EDMONTON -- Scoring has not been an issue for the Edmonton Oilers since Connor McDavid arrived in 2015 and teamed up with Leon Draisaitl.
Stopping opponents from scoring is another story.
That's why the highest-scoring team in the NHL last season made defense a major point of focus during training camp with the goal of winning their first Stanley Cup championship since 1990.
"We made a couple of tweaks to the system," said McDavid, the Oilers captain. "That's an emphasis to our group to keep the puck out of our net. It's been well documented that our new system focuses on that."
The first test comes Wednesday, when the Oilers open the season at the Vancouver Canucks (10 p.m. ET; SN1, SNE, SNO, SNP).
Edmonton scored 325 goals last season, including 89 on the power play, and set an NHL record by converting 32.4 percent of its opportunities on the man-advantage, surpassing the 1977-78 Montreal Canadiens (31.9 percent). It also allowed 256 goals (17th) and had the 20th-ranked penalty kill (77.0 percent). The defensive struggles caught up to the Oilers in the Western Conference Second Round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs, a six-game loss to the eventual Stanley Cup champion Vegas Golden Knights.
The Oilers were outscored 22-19 in the best-of-7 series, 9-5 in the final two games. It was a wake-up call.
"I think Vegas did a really good job with that against us," defenseman Mattias Ekholm said. "I felt like they were rarely out of position, they were rarely trying to cheat their system and I think that's something that we all know in here.
"You may win 6-1 in the regular season, but usually it's the tight games in the playoffs that we need to win and in order to win those, I feel like we need to be a team that has be confident to be in our own end for 40, 45 seconds at a time, because it's going to happen."
Coach Jay Woodcroft said the commitment to defense can't just be in their own end.
"We want to be a great checking team," Woodcroft said. "I think the best place you can check is in the offensive zone, so we spend a lot of time talking about being good in that area, so you don't have to be good about defending in your own zone.
"We have a lot of things in place in terms of rules and organization back into our own zone so that hopefully we turn pucks over and go the other way. If the other team does give up possession of the puck, we have things in place to try and break out quickly. In the end, if we find ourselves in our own zone and [defensive] zone coverage, we want to be comfortable there. We want to feel good about ourselves. The beginning of training camp was dedicated to that, and the players have bought in. They've done a great job."
The Oilers do not want to be afraid of keeping opponents to the outside and protecting the front of the net. They feel a good defensive structure will lead to better opportunities on the rush going back the other way.
"It's a maturity for sure," Ekholm said, "but I think it's great that everybody is realizing it's OK if we have to be in the [defensive] zone for a minute for a shift every now in then, even if you are a high-producing player. You can't start after 20 seconds to go on your own page, and you go do something on your own and then it hurts us in the end, and that's the reality that we have to realize."
Ekholm was acquired in a trade with the Nashville Predators on Feb. 28. He brought a veteran presence to the blue line and was a big reason the Oilers finished the season on a 14-0-1 run. They're looking to build on that success and toward becoming solid defensively in the playoffs.
"We had a little bit of a different look post-[NHL] Trade Deadline to pre-trade deadline, and the numbers speak for themselves what our team record was and where we finished in all the defensive metrics," Woodcroft said. "We do know how to defend, but I think the mindset was ingrained in our team from our opening meeting in training camp, a good portion of practices through the first week were dedicated towards that. In the end, the coaches are making it important, and the players are making it important, and we've seen some positive results here."
The Oilers believe focusing on defensive structure won't take away from their dynamic offense, particularly if McDavid and Draisaitl have successful seasons. McDavid won the Art Ross Trophy last season with an NHL-high 153 points (64 goals, 89 assists). Draisaitl was second (128 points; 52 goals, 76 assists).
"We can't change our game," Draisaitl said. "There are a lot of reasons we've made it to the conference final and the second round and that's because of how good of an offensive team we are. You can't lose that, but there are little things in our defensive game that we're willing to do and we have been doing. We just have to continue to chip away at that."
