The ideal Edmonton Oilers lineup to eliminate the Dallas Stars

The Edmonton Oilers will enter the third round of the playoffs with more momentum than they have ever had this season. More than a few people considered the Los Angeles Kings to be the favourites, but Edmonton disposed of them in six quick games. Despite that, no one but Edmonton’s most die hard fans considered the Oilers to be the favourite against the Vegas Golden Knights. As deep and talented as they are, Edmonton said, “Thanks for stopping by” and showed Vegas the door in five tidy games.

The Oilers were the first to advance to the Western Conference Final and will face an extremely difficult opponent in the Dallas Stars. Dallas’ win last night sets up a rematch from last year’s conference final which Edmonton won in six games.

Dallas poses a similar problem to Vegas, namely, incredible depth. Before the start of these playoffs I would have said that a deep offensive team would be Edmonton’s Achilles heel, since on paper, Edmonton just doesn’t have the same depth. When they hit the ice though, the Oilers have proved that they are perfectly able to overcome that perceived shortcoming.

The question is, what are the optimal lines for the Oilers facing such deep team as Dallas?

Best offensive lines for Edmonton

Without getting into the conversation of goalies too much, and while acknowledging the outstanding performances the Oilers have got from their netminders the last few games, Edmonton has always been a team that travels on it’s offence. Certainly the hope is that the quality goalie starts will continue but it would be too much to expect continued shutouts against teams like Dallas and Winnipeg.

Edmonton is the second highest scoring team to play in the playoffs and highest still standing, they also get scored on third most among teams still alive. So overpowering offence is probably the best policy right now.

It’s my opinion that, considering the unpredictable, fast paced, and ever-changing nature of hockey, it’s a mistake for a team to focus too much on defence. No matter how good your team’s defence is, something will go wrong and you will get scored on. Defence is about control and you just can’t exercise that much control in a game like hockey.

The problem with taking stats from playoffs is that there isn’t a large sample size. So looking back into the regular season shows, to no one’s surprise, that the Zach Hyman-Leon Draisaitl-Connor McDavid line was the most successful line the Oilers fielded and one of the best in the league. The Viktor Arvidsson-Draisaitl-Vasily Podkolzin line was also solid. After that though the lines start to get pretty questionable, highlighting the Oiler’s depth problem.

However things have changed since then and something new and impressive has emerged in the playoffs. Looking at the playoff stats shows something incredibly rare. The four best lines in goals for% over 25 minutes played have no overlap with each other, I can promise you that this is essentially unheard of.

Those lines are: