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Can you guess which player is the most under-rated Edmonton Oiler this season?

Of course you can.

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That player is none other than the player on the team that you admire the most while at the same time a large and ignorant faction of people continue to unfairly criticize and under-value. Could anything be more obvious?

In saying this, I only mildly jest. We’re all biased on such a matter, perhaps hopelessly biased.

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By definition, it’s extremely difficult to try to identify the most under-rated play. It presents a perplexing conundrum. How so? Because if a player is the most under-rated that means many, many people have a gigantic blind spot about him. They fail to see the attributes of the particular player. Put another way, if that player’s real value was readily apparent to most fans, he wouldn’t be under-rated. But who is to say any one of us doesn’t share in the common blind spot regarding said player, rendering us unable to truly identify him as the most under-rated player? And what it most of us do? That would, in fact, make him the most under-rated.

All that said, I’ll give this question a go, my own blind spots and all.

The player I am going to select got off to a rocky start in Edmonton. He now scores like a top-line player.

He skates and checks hard, does a solid job on defence and kills penalties.

For all that, he was at the top of the list of many local fans and pundits when it came to identifying a player to move out at the NHL trade deadline.

He’s so under-rated most fans and players around the NHL don’t even think of him when it comes to identifying under-rated players.

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How did I identify this particular player?

First by determining which Oilers forwards and d-men are most valuable as compared to their teammates, then by digging into how various Oilers are under-valued and under-appreciated by local fans, local media, their own coaches and around the NHL. I picked the highest performing player who is also under-valued.

Let’s go through the process, shall we?

Who are Edmonton’s top and lowest performing players?

Top players help create a lot of Grade A shots and goals. They help prevent Grade A shots and goals against. They also tend to contribute on special teams and can also provide an intimidating physical element.

When it comes to Oilers forwards, I’ll suggest the top performing forwards this year are Connor McDavid (way ahead of anyone else), followed by Zach Hyman and Leon Draisaitl, with the second tier led by Warren Foegele and also including Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Evander Kane, Sam Gagner, Adam Henrique, Corey Perry, Ryan McLeod, Mattias Janmark, and a bottom tier of Connor Brown, Dylan Holloway, James Hamblin, Raphael Lavoie, Adam Erne, Derek Ryan and Sam Carrick. 

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On defence, the top tier is Evan Bouchard and Mattias Ekholm, with Brett Kulak and Darnell Nurse and Vincent Desharnais mid-tier, and Cody Ceci, Philip Broberg and Troy Stecher at the lower tier.

For the goalies, Stuart Skinner and Calvin Pickard have both been solid. 

In the following section, I’ll give more detail on my rankings, if you interested. If numbers and micro-stats aren’t your thing, you can skip ahead to the section where I announce my selection.

I arrive at my rankings in large part through the Cult of Hockey’s video analysis project. We’ve been doing this video review since 2007-08 on all goals for and against the Oilers, and since 2010-11 on all Grade A shots as well.

We identify which players make major contributions to all Grade A shots for and which make major mistakes on all Grade A shots against. In general, I make the initial assessment, then Cult colleague Bruce McCurdy checks my work, and helps correct any mistakes. We keep careful notes of each game and tabulate results for the season in this document.

For any number of be of value, it must fairly and accurately reflect the ability of a player in some crucial aspect of the game. For a player like McDavid, for example, his point scoring is dramatically superior to any other Oilers player. His on-ice numbers — if we are to put any real weight on them — must also dramatically indicate his superiority, and that’s exactly what his Cult of Hockey’s individual plus-minus on goals and on Grade A shots does.

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For example, the average Oilers forward has made at even strength 2.55 major contributions to Grade A shots per game (defined as15 minutes even strength) this season. McDavid has made 4.17 per game. Bottom line players are much less productive, Brown at 1.82 per game, Holloway 1.61, Ryan 1.44 and Erne 1.66.

McDavid’s overall even strength Grade A shots plus-minus per game of +3.01 per game is vastly better than other players, with Hyman next at +2.59, Foegele +2.1 and Draisaitl +2.08 and bottom tier players like Ryan at +0.77.

The same goes for their even strength goals plus-minus per game, with McDavid at +0.76 goals per game, Hyman +0.6,8 Draisaitl +0.57 and Foegele +0.42 and bottom tier players like Brown at +0.05 and Holloway at -0.17, the huge variance in results indicative of the huge variance in performance.

MYrankings are also informed by the special teams contributions of each player and the physical aspect they bring, which elevates the value of players like Kane, Nurse, Ekholm, Perry and others.

Of course, it’s one thing to fairly and accurately assess performance but altogether different to determine who is under-rated and over-rated. One way to assess this is to compare performance to their pay. I’ll go with something a bit more general, each player’s performance compared to how local fans, media, NHL player and outsiders rate the players.

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In The Athletic’s poll of NHL players, Zach Hyman and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins were identified as under-rated, and it’s evidently the case that Hyman has haters in other places, mainly disgruntled Leafs fans and the odd misguided and confused social justice warrior-type who resents he’s from an affluent family. But neither Hyman or RNH are anywhere close to under-rated in the Edmonton market. Both fans and media adore the two players.

McDavid is seen as the best player in hockey and Draisaitl in the Top 5. It’s hard to see them as under-rated. Ekholm is also extremely well-regarded in Edmonton and around the NHL. In the well-regarded category I’d put Corey Perry, Vincent Desharnais, Brett Kulak, Sam Gagner,  Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Adam Henrique, Dylan Holloway and Ryan McLeod.

Players like Darnell Nurse, Evander Kane, Cody Ceci and Connor Brown have had their struggles this year, but I’ll suggest this is reflected in fan and pundit opinion, making them neither under nor over rated in Edmonton at least.

That leaves Evan Bouchard, Mattias Janmark and Warren Foegele.

Bouchard is adored by many, harshly criticized by others, depending on their taste in NHL d-men. It could be that both the pro- and anti-Bouchard factions make a valid point, though I will suggest Bouchard is generally under-rated.

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Janmark is an OK-ish performer at even strength and a solid penalty killer, but he’s got a loud faction of haters who see little value in his game, making him under-rated in my books.

I’m also tempted to list Gagner here, as he’s been sent to the minors even as he’s performed well for the Oilers. That said, most fans are firmly on the Gagner bandwagon, adoring the three-time Oiler and yearning for his return to the line-up.

And the winner is?

Warren Foegele is the most under-rated Oilers player.

He arrived under a cloud, with many upset that fan favourite Ethan Bear had been traded to acquire him. Foegele at once signed a sizeable contract, $2.75 million per for three years, which some saw as too rich for a player who scored 10-to-13 goals a year. Just now, though, it’s slowly dawning on many Oilers fans and observers that a few more years of Foegele at that price would be sweet.

His play took off starting in January 2023. Since that time, he’s consistently been Edmonton’s second best winger at even strength, behind only Hyman. He forechecks and backchecks hard. He’s reliable on defence. He’s become a useful penalty killer.

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Most of all, he’s putting up points like a top line player, 2.26 per 60 minutes even strength, ranking him 55th overall in the NHL for regular forwards this season, placing him solidly as a first-line point scorer.

By comparison Connor McDavid is first for NHL forwards at 3.51 per 60, Draisaitl 12th at 2.63, Hyman 13th at 2.62, Henrique at 127th at 1.88, RNH 156th at 1.74, McLeod 211th at 1.55, Perry 237th at 1.49, Kane 240th at 1.48, Janmark 328th at 1.09, Carrick 364th at 0.87, Brown 366th at 0.85 and Ryan 385th at 0.65.

As mentioned, Foegele’s individual Grade A shots and goals totals place him as the fourth most effective Oilers forward at even strength.

Yet for all this, at the NHL trade deadline, credible sources reported Foegele as a player possibly on the block.  He was listed by TSN as the 34th most likely player to get. The Daily Faceoff was slightly more bullish on the notion, listing Foegele at 25th overall. I heard credible local hockey analysts also saying Foegele might be moved out in a salary dump to bring in a top winger, and there’s also a loud faction of fans on social media who downplay his performance and would have been happy to see him moved out.

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For all these reasons, I’m pleased to announce that Foegele is the most under-rated Edmonton Oilers player of the 2023-24 season.

Make sense?

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