4th Line Deja Vu?

It's narrative-examining time again.

The story of this summer, especially from the outside, has been that the Edmonton Oilers trying to run it back into the playoffs with largely the same team that posted 78 points last year.

Fans or informed observers can and have contested that notion wherever I've read it, citing a possible influx of first round talent (it turned out to be all three) and a few veteran additions - as well as a hope for health and regression across the roster.

I have my quibbles with the notion that all three are likely to be actual improvements on the team, but what is most interesting to me is how certain a large portion of the fanbase seems that improvements have been made to the bottom of the roster, and the implications therein.

Todd McLellan trimmed the bottom of the lineup with a mandate: Pontus Aberg and Jakub Jerabek were both flushed to make room for a pair of NHL-rare PTO signings Alex Chiasson and Jason Garrison, with the verbal around Scottie Upshall getting a contract approaching certainty before he even hit the ice, before he was sidelined for medical reasons.

I should add detail to my statement on the rarity of professional try-outs resulting in an NHL contract - of the 378 PTO's issued since 2015-16 (as far back as capfriendly.com has on record), 41 contracts have been rewarded. The number of try-outs NHL teams have given out as a whole has decreased year over year since the fall of 2016 as more and more teams fill their bottom six with farm-team graduates instead of the veterans of the league playing musical chairs every fall, but even then only a rounded 18% of PTO's led to NHL contracts this fall, and the Oilers would have had three of them if health permitted.

So, against the odds, two rugged role players were kept over Aberg and Jerabek, players who are surely more creative with the puck on their stick than Chiasson and Garrison, but whom the coaching staff never took to, citing prowess on the penalty kill as well as the players' mentality and approach to playing the role to be critical to winning the job.

With that we arrive at a similar lower line and pairing makeup as 2017-18. Compare Garrison, Chiasson, and Brodziak to Gryba, Pakarinen and Letestu.

That's an immobile, puck-separating defenceman, a tweener with unequal parts offense and enthusiasm, and a good soldier, archetypical fourth-line center whose boots will leave him in the semi-near future.

These similarities should be alarming. All will remember how the Oilers fell behind hard early, remembering McDavid's flu bouts and Talbot's shakiness, but only some will remember this part:

On November 22nd, Mark Letestu was on the ice for the first Oilers goal for in all of his minutes at even strength that far in the season.

The fourth unit was 0-9 GF-GA.

By this date, the Oilers had the 5th worst even-strength goalshare, 39-50. Nine of the eleven goals that put them off balance came from a leaky fourth line.

At the time, Oscar was getting the public lashings, Ryan Strome was being shopped for trade for daring to score at his career pace, Jussi Jokinen was the butt of jokes unending but Drake Caggiula and Mark Letestu were 3-14 and 0-9 respectively in GF-GA.

…

As it stands now, the Edmonton Oilers are 3-7 in even strength goalshare, for 30% - the third worst mark in the NHL, no one has scored without McDavid on the ice, and the Brodziak-Kassian fourth unit duo is 0-2 GF-GA in two games played.

Remember, Mark Letestu was fine in 2016-17, when his boots left him, they left him... and Brodziak's 7 months and change Letestu's elder.

It's not a given that the 4th line sinks the team's start again.

But it's also not a given that improvements were actually made - and this is a consequence of the selections of player personnel by the residing coaching staff.