The first step in any successful offseason is to properly identify where things went wrong.

For the Edmonton Oilers, there’s a lot you can point to. Whether you’re discussing goaltending, defence, or special teams, none of it was up to snuff in their first-round series against the Anaheim Ducks.

Now that the dust has settled, I’d like to do one last retrospective on a disappointing series for Edmonton, focusing on some key data points. To do it, I’ll be using numbers from Corey Sznajder, creator of All Three Zones.

Corey does an excellent job tracking microstats throughout the NHL season, which uncover fascinating details under the hood. Traditional stats like goals and shots can tell us what happened, but microstats tell us how it happened. They’re the little things like zone exits and puck retrieval success rate, which highlight strengths and weaknesses within the process.

For this article, I’m picking the most interesting microstats from the Oilers first-round series against Anaheim, and what the implications are for the team this offseason.

Point Shot Assists – EDM: 26 ANA: 13

One of the telltale signs that things aren’t going well for the Oilers is when they start to rely too heavily on point shots. Shots from the blue-line have gone out of vogue in the NHL over the past decade or so, as teams have taken a more thoughtful approach to offence.

According to Sportlogiq, inner slot shots have an incredible success rate of 22 per cent. Point shots, on the other hand, are terribly inefficient, only going in about one per cent of the time (three per cent if there’s traffic). Statistical analysis has caused a shift away from the old-school strategy of firing slap shots from the point and crashing the crease for rebounds.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with mixing in some point shots, especially if there’s deliberate traffic and lateral passing to get the goalie moving. Edmonton was deferring to their blue liners for shots far too often, though. They made 26 passes leading to point shots, which is double the 13 that the Ducks set up. Again, this would be fine if the Oilers were also outshooting and out-chancing the Ducks from other areas of the ice. They did not. All Three Zones had the chances as 98-76 in favour of the Ducks in the series.

We saw this a lot........

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