Our defence was JUST good enough for this team to do what it did. That defence is worse right now.
The coaching staff deserves those accolades and are still here. But you realize that as much as we hated Ceci he is better than any of Emberson, Stetcher, Brown, Dermott etc. and not a small amount.
You have a worse dcore you get worse results.
That said we have till the deadline to fix it.
Again, I'm gonna call bullshit.
You guys really don't know what the f*** you have in a coach in Knoblaugh. He is the best coach this team has had maybe since Sather and y'all are stuck on freaking Cody Ceci, gimme a break.
Another set of facts, the Oilers were f***ing awful at defending in the 2022 and 2023 playoffs, they were the WORST goals against for any team past round 1 in both 2022 and 2023 at 3.68 GA in 2022 and down only modestly to a still very bad 3.5 GA in 2023.
What does Knoblaugh/Coffey do their first year out? They took that down all the way to 2.6 GA.
How good is 2.6 GA? Pretty damn good, it's lower than the 2022 Cup champs Colorado Avalanche and about dead even with the 2024 Cup champs the Florida Panthers. So basically on par if not a bit better than 2/3 last Cup champions.
And that's with Holland giving Knoblaugh f*** all to work with. No upgrade on Ceci, couldn't get anything done for the d-corps at the 2024 trade deadline, we settled for Henrique who wasn't even healthy for most of the playoffs, so basically dick all for help, no cavalry came whatsoever.
Knoblaugh/Coffey took that mediocre defensive core, which was one of the worst in the league on Nov. 12, 2023, the date of his hiring, and immediately turned them around into a top 6 D corps in the regular season and then one of the best D corps in the playoffs.
The COACHES are the reason for the dramatic change in these numbers, there was no roster addition, they took a D that was mediocre in 22-23 (17th overall in GA in the regular season) and made them into a top defensive unit, and that's DESPITE garbage like Ceci and Desharnais back there, not because of those guys because those guys weren't doing f*** all when the Oilers were floundering to start the season.