New Edmonton Oilers forward Teddy Purcell has learned a few things in his time in the NHL.
Going from the Los Angeles Kings to the Tampa Bay Lightning helped establish him as a very offensively capable player who can score goals and distribute the puck. If there’s one thing he says he needs to do more of, however, it’s to shoot the puck as Jim Matheson of the Edmonton Journal shared.
Purcell said he get yelled at a lot for not firing the puck more often — he recorded 156 shots in 80 games last season — “but there are lots of guys here who can make plays, so I’ll shoot more.”
Over his career, Purcell hasn’t been a big time shooter.
In 310 career games, he has 645 shots on goal -- an average of 2.08 per game. He has 67 career goals and while being a set-up man is great to have, the Oilers aren’t running short on those with Taylor Hall, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Jordan Eberle.
Hall, Eberle and David Perron were very capable goal scorers last season but the Oilers will need more punch there. Purcell scored 24 goals in 2011-12 and 17 the season before that. Since then, he was caught up passing off to Steven Stamkos and Martin St. Louis. Great options to defer to, but now he’ll be the “older” guy at 28 years old playing in Edmonton.