Connor McDavid’s Slow Start Shows How Desperately the Oilers Need Him At His Best

With their top player not at his usual superhuman level so far, Edmonton has fallen apart.

For years, Connor McDavid’s story was one of individual brilliance amidst mediocre team results. His Edmonton Oilers missed the playoffs in three of his first four NHL seasons, and won just a single series over the course of his first six years in the league. Along with fellow MVP teammate Leon Draisaitl, McDavid produced prodigious numbers that look even more impressive when adjusted for the scoring environment of the modern era. But it wasn’t until the past few seasons that Edmonton started to make McDavid more of a fixture on the postseason stage. 

That included a conference finals run (ending against the eventual champion Colorado Avalanche) in 2022, and a hard-fought second-round exit (versus the eventual champion Vegas Golden Knights) in 2023. Based on the arc of the team’s improvement, and the fact that McDavid continued to add new dimensions to his greatness, it was fair to expect Edmonton to keep building on its recent momentum and maybe even give McDavid a shot at winning the Stanley Cup soon.

Which is what makes this season so disappointing, and borderline inexplicable: Not only are the Oilers not among the league’s leading Cup contenders, but they may not even make the playoffs — and a surprisingly mortal performance from McDavid is one of the big reasons why.

Although they’ve recently started winning some, a blend of betting odds and statistical models still gives Edmonton just a 49% chance to make the postseason, meaning the team is more likely than not to miss the playoffs for the first time since 2019, a much earlier (and darker) phase of the McDavid Era. The 90.8 standings points the Oilers are on track for would also be their lowest in a full season since 2019, down 15.7 points from their average in the previous two seasons. In a nightmare for Oilers fans, this squad suddenly looks a lot like the bad version under coach Todd McLellan in McDavid’s first few seasons, not the version that had improved under Dave Tippett and Jay Woodcroft in recent years.

(Adding insult to injury, the Oilers fired Woodcroft on Sunday, while McLellan is currently leading the L.A. Kings, who have one of the best records in the Western conference.)

There’s no shortage of factors driving Edmonton’s struggles early this season. Goalies Stuart Skinner and Jack Campbell both rank among the league’s worst netminders, and as a team the Oilers have the NHL’s fourth-lowest save percentage. Edmonton is allowing the league’s fifth-most goals per game, and the team’s penalty-killing ranks eighth-to-last. But defensive struggles for this team are nothing new. What’s shocking is that the Oilers can’t score, either — they rank ninth-worst in goals per game, with last year’s record-setting power play down to No. 7 in the league — and that McDavid ranks just fourth on the team in goals and fifth in points.

Ordinarily, averaging a point per game (McDavid has 13 points in 13 contests) wouldn’t be a bad thing for most players. But McDavid, now in his age-27 season, isn’t most players. Last season, he scored a league-high 64 goals and 153 points in 82 games, his sixth 100-point campaign in seven seasons. (The lone exception was 2020, which was shortened due to the COVID-19 pandemic.) So this year’s down performance really sticks out: If we account for the fact that leaguewide scoring continues to be at a three-decade high point, McDavid is on pace for just 21 adjusted goals and 68 adjusted points — both levels not seen since he was a 19-year-old rookie phenom.

Using my Goals Above Replacement stat to get a holistic view of his value added — including both offense and defense — McDavid is tracking for just 10.0 adjusted GAR this year, the worst season of his entire career. (To get a sense of what types of players produce 10.0 GAR, that’s roughly how many Mats Zuccarello, Joel Eriksson Ek, Sam Reinhart and Chandler Stephenson had last year.) It’s not terrible output … unless the standard is McDavid’s league-leading 35.8 mark from a season ago. The most valuable star in hockey is now playing like a second-liner.

The drop-off is so startling that it’s difficult to draw comparisons with other mid-career stars from the past, especially in the absence of a major injury. McDavid did miss time with an upper-body injury last month, so the ill effects of that may still be plaguing his performance. However, McDavid has played in 87% of possible games for Edmonton this season regardless, so the injury hasn’t been severe enough to sideline him for a truly extended amount of time. 

And among players who logged at least 80% of team games in a season, McDavid’s dip of 25.8 adjusted GAR from the previous season would set a new record (since the Original Six era) for the largest year-over-year decline in performance, surpassing Johnny Gaudreau’s 21.4-GAR fall from grace last season. McDavid’s 78-point decline in adjusted scoring would also set a new mark, topping “Terrible Ted” Lindsay’s 62-point drop-off from 1957 to 1958.

McDavid’s current plight probably won’t last for very long. His track record of excellence is too strong, and his talent too great, to suffer this down of a season in the middle of his prime. Both his own shooting percentage — a career-low 10.0% — and that of his team while he’s on the ice — 9.1%, also a career low — will surely see a bounce as the schedule goes on. This will naturally lead to more goals for the Oilers, and better stats for their best player as a byproduct.

If anything, though, this situation is another reminder of how dependent Edmonton is on McDavid to stay healthy and put up superhuman numbers in order for the team to be competitive.

While the Oilers do have problems that extend beyond McDavid’s slump, it shouldn’t be too surprising that when a guy who is normally worth nearly 40 net goals in a season falls to a pace of 10 net goals added, the team’s overall goal differential also falls apart. Sure, Draisaitl is still producing points at nearly his usual rate, which helps mitigate the damage, and left wing Zach Hyman is picking up where he left off last season. But when McDavid is playing like a prime Gretzky — this is no exaggeration, he surpassed the Great One’s value with Edmonton from 1986 (35.6 adjusted GAR) last season — it goes a long way toward covering up problems on defense and in net. With that factor missing so far, those issues are exposed in a major way.

That’s a lot of pressure to put on one player, even though McDavid has proven he can handle it in the past. But this season also proves that the Oilers still have no margin for error if their captain doesn’t put on an all-time show, night in and night out.

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