Misguided expectations could define the young Russian’s future

Nail Yakupov has gotten a lot of flak for failing to meet the expectations that come with being drafted first overall, but this year some things just might be different.

Looking back to April 27, 2013, an ultimately meaningless game between the Edmonton Oilers and Vancouver Canucks was being played out — the last game in yet another season that the Oilers underwhelmed almost everyone’s expectations.

The game started rather slow but switched gears when in the final frame Yakupov scored a hat-trick in the span of just a few minutes. Rexall Place was electric and for a moment everyone forgot that the game was all but a formality. This was an early glimpse at what Oilers fans and management would grow to expect out of Yakupov and assumptions about the damage he’d do the following season quickly reached the unrealistic.

Let’s jump forward now to the following November where an atrocious start had the Oilers all but out of the playoff race long before Ol’ St. Nick was coming to drop off my yearly stipend of coal and whisky. The combination of new coaching, historically bad goaltending and minor league defenceman imploded, leaving the Oilers brass with enough humble pie on their faces to impress the three stooges. Yakupov, who led the Oilers in scoring in the condensed 2012–13 season, had managed only a single goal through the first 15 games and people began to wonder if the Oilers made the wrong pick — ignoring the fact that this was a 19-year-old who had just passed the 60 game mark of his National Hockey League career.

The real ugly stuff began when Yakupov would see his ice time dwindle to the point of becoming a healthy scratch. The media then pitted rookie head coach Dallas Eakins and Yakupov against each other, leading the young Russian to have to answer tough questions from reporters on a nightly basis — all while being under-armed in the English language. Reporters asked him if he wanted to be traded, what would he do if his ice time didn’t increase, had he considered leaving for the Kontinental Hockey League.

Listen, I’m all for players having to answer to the media — they are professional athletes being paid rather handsomely — but some of the answers Yakupov gave seemed to be taken out of context. Yakupov’s agent, Igor Larionov, would only make things worse when he accused the Oilers of mishandling his client and proclaimed that they were open to a trade. To be fair, this was an agent protecting a young client that pays him — it just came across horribly.

Yakupov’s 2013–14 season would end prematurely due to injury — when the dust settled he managed just 11 goals while going a horrendous Saskatchewan mid-January-like -33. He needed to be a lot better, but some of his problems are projected to improve this year based on what some basic analytics can tell us about last season.

Offensively, Yakupov saw his shooting percentage plummet from a likely unsustainable 21 per cent in his rookie year to a rather disappointing 9 per cent in 2013–14. It isn’t unrealistic to expect Yakupov’s shooting percentage to take a healthy jump into the 12–15 per cent range this year. A combination of better puck luck, more powerplay time and a rise in linemate quality should help this.

On the defensive side, Yakupov is quite obviously never going to be an elite player, but last year’s brutal showing also isn’t likely to repeat itself either. In his first year, the Oilers team save percentage was .917, which was roughly the league average. However, last year the Oilers team save percentage was .901, good enough for fourth worst in the league and helped the Oilers give up the most goals in the NHL. Obviously this hurts everyone on the team’s plus/minus, but even more unfortunate for Yakupov was that his personal on ice save percentage was the second worst in the entire league — .882 at five on five, according to The Copper & Blue.

Improved goaltending, a better defensive core and almost guaranteed better luck should turn his -33 into something closer to respectable this season.

All of this is not to say that Yakupov doesn’t deserve a large share of the blame for why last season was a total train wreck. He needs to be substantially better than last year and commit to improving his game at both ends of the rink. But if Yakupov can turn it around and get some better puck luck, he can give Edmonton a dynamic that the other young Oilers don’t bring: a shoot-first power play option with a growing mean streak.

—

Graphic: Stephanie Mah/Graphics Editor