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Let’s parse Hall’s season-to-date in five equal groups of 15 GP.

Boxcars on the left, a few peripheral stats on the right. All show the same disturbing trends: good start, even better second segment, but since then down, down, down. The most volatile stat, plus-minus — which has the smallest sample size and the most factors beyond an individual player’s control — fell right off the cliff but has stabilized again as of late. Hall’s shot rates, excellent in the early going, have dropped significantly, and his shooting percentage has diminished in lockstep. He’s now down to 8.6% on the season, down from last year’s 8.9% after four straight seasons in the low double digits. Not unrelated, his powerplay production has stagnated at a miserable 1 point per 15 games for three segments in a row now. Not that the Oilers’ powerplay has been a problem or anything.

Of course none of this is happening in a vacuum. The Oilers have been a worse team since Klefbom left the line-up. More directly, Draisaitl has returned to earth after a fantastic early run with Hall — after Game 30, Leon was 20 GP, 9-17-26; since then he is 45 GP, 9-13-22. That’s a drop from 1.3 P/G to just 0.5, not all that different from Hall’s own. How much of their joint slump is a drop-off in Draisaitl’s play, in Hall’s, or simply a change in shooting luck? I would suggest “all of the above”, though it’s hard to weight one factor to the next.

The underlying numbers suggest that it’s not just a matter of playing in worse luck, though that’s certainly some of it. Both guys were rocking a PDO (on-ice Sh% + Sv% at even strength) of around 104% after the Rangers game; since then, just 98%. But both players have seen their shot shares (SF%) drop by a couple of percentage points, suggesting they are not carrying the play to quite the degree they were. One reasonable conclusion is that “the truth lies somewhere in the middle”: they are neither as good as they showed for that one hot roll, nor as so-so as their recent results suggest. And surely to goodness, the team-wide powerplay drought can’t last forever. Can it?