McDavid should be on here just bc I think he goes back to roughly 120 points

Why? What will have changed for McDavid this season from last that would wind up with him scoring 30 less points? Nugent Hopkins for example outshot his career shooting % by a fair margin and led the league in secondary assists, a stat that doesn't often repeat itself with how random secondary assists end up being.

Everyone knowing he scored 150 points... And I expect the PP to take a regression in terms of efficiency and number of chances

McDavid had only 4 more EV points this year compared to last year...

Crosby suggested we could see 170 from McDavid this year.

That would mean either he actually takes a step forward at EV or the PP gets up to like 40% efficiency which I don't see happening

Again, why? Why would their PP take a big hit in terms of efficiency? It's all the same players except Barrie ... but their PP actually got better after Barrie was traded last season.

Hell, even beyond that. The Oilers have the best PP across the last 3 seasons at 29%. They had 275 PPs last season. Even if they regressed to the 3 year average, it would only be 9 less goals scored. When talking about the biggest regression in the league, 6-7 points from the PP will get you part way there but there's still a lot of room to make up elsewhere. You are right, McDavid might not score 150 point again but there's no data that would suggest he drops down to something like 120 or that we should expect big drop offs like the above names.

Do you not think taking a step forward at EV is possible, even probable?

McDavid PP points comp to actual points last 4 years:
55 points per 82 - 124 per 82
54 points per 82 - 153.75 per 82
45 points per 82 - 126 per 82
71 points per 82 - 153 per 82

I'm just pointing it out... And I think team will have a game plan come into this year

For him... Maybe but I find it unlikely as he's consistently been around a PPG at EV

Edmonton has been one of the top PP units for 5-6 straight seasons. They are a team who has consistently lost or come close to losing at 5on5 and won games on the PP. What's different now than it was say going into last season or the season before? What new incentive is there?

The Oilers didn't have a 30%+ PP percentage

No, they just led the league with numbers like 27-29%. Do you think 1-3% better PP conversion rate is going to make coaches think drastically different to stop the 9 goals across 82 games for the Oilers? Where's the incentive?

He played 35% of his 5v5 TOI with Draisaitl last season. If the coach increased that, you'd see McDavid's 5v5 scoring rates increase too. It's that simple.

Also, you think NHL teams will gameplan for McDavid this year? Why haven't they thought of this before!?

26% to 32.4% is a pretty big difference, especially over multiple hundreds of sample sizes...

He literally pointed out its 9 goals total

Like 3 times he wrote it.

You quoted it multiple times

Difference is, Draisaitl's not much of a EV player...

And teams have another year to do so... With another year and even more time to breakdown his game...

It's roughly a 15 point jump... which is significant... That's the difference between 153 points and 137 points etc.

LOL. Teams have been game planning for McDavid for the better part of a decade - what makes you think THIS year will be different?

You don't think Huberdeau will have even a slight bounceback?

Pettersson

As long as McDavid plays a full season healthy. Not much regression will happen in Edmonton. If he was to get hurt for a long time 20 or more games, everyone on the Oilers will see a massive drop in points.

It was closer to 40%. 39% of his 5v5 minutes with McDavid. Which likely is more than half his 5v5 points if not closer to 3/4s. McDavid is the big driver on the Oilers.

We're talking about McDavid. He played 1308:16 minutes total at 5v5 last season, 469:18 of those were with Draisaitl. If you do the math you'll see that McDavid spent exactly 35.8719% of his 5v5 TOI with Draisaitl.

Over the past 3 years they've spent 1104:57 together at 5v5, with an on ice scoring rate of 4.45 GF/60.
Apart, McDavid's on ice scoring rate is 3.16 GF/60 in 2469:03.
Apart, Draisaitl's on ice scoring rate is 2.90 GF/60 in 2359:31.

- Therefore McDavid's scoring rate is 40.82% BETTER when he's with Draisaitl than when he isn't. Draisaitl's on ice scoring rate is 53.45% better when he's with McDavid than when he isn't.
- Over the past 3 seasons McDavid has spent 30.92% of his 5v5 TOI with Draisaitl.
- Over the past 3 seasons Draisaitl has spent 31.89% of his 5v5 TOI with McDavid.

It's clearly a symbiotic relationship between two great players, McDavid being the better of the two.

As Crosby said, McDavid is the best player in the league, but Nate and Leon are right there.

That he actually put up 150 points... But put up similar EV numbers as his last years

To add to this, because I know it's the single stat that you are MOST interested in in the entire world:

Over the past 3 seasons Draisaitl has spent 31.89% of his 5v5 TOI with McDavid and scored 41.38% of his points in that span.

On the flip side, over the past 3 seasons McDavid has spent 30.92% of his 5v5 TOI with Draisaitl and scored 35.84% of his points in that span.