Once in the blue moon there are unearthly performances in the National Hockey League. We expect players of the caliber of Connor McDavid of Edmonton to raise this bar constantly. They are just so talented.
McDavid raised that bar once more in the first round.
In a surprisingly competitive series of seven games against the Los Angeles Kings, McDavid put together one of the best individual performances I can remember. At times, his body seemed to be possessed by a force in the universe — significantly faster and stronger than anyone else on the ice, with a deadly execution.
And it’s in the playoffs against a Kings team that has shown the ability to slow down teams this season, armed with perhaps the best NHL player to be sent off in Philip Dano. (Aside from that, it’s hard to say enough about how great Danault was both in the regular season and in the playoffs; Los Angeles finding an elite offensive striker who can suddenly score 30 goals a season is remarkable. Color me impressed!)
Edmonton was the more talented team in the series, but McDavid was the difference. This is not a small thing for goalkeeper Mike Smith, who was – with the exception of a few blunders in handling puck – strong in the net. And players like Evander Kane and Leon Dreiseitl (12 goals in total) were invaluable.
But McDavid was on another level. He scored four goals and 10 assists, played minutes at the defenders’ level (37 percent of the available ice time) and prevented the Kings from winning any of the minutes he was on the ice.
See the progress of the game in the series, distinguishing between the minutes played by McDavid and the minutes played by any other line of the Oilers. It was a lot of play and a lively series until McDavid stepped on the ice, when he always looked like a man against small children.
Territorially, it was a bloodbath:
During the series, the Oilers won about 47% of the shots and 46% of the expected goals with McDavid off the ice, with a noticeable advantage in Game 2 and Game 7. The McDavid line, on the other hand, became a supernova: the Oilers had 61% of the shots and an incredible 68% of the expected goals. Layer this in its 37 percent usage rate and it’s a tidal wave.
How did this territorial domination affect the series? I would say that without McDavid Edmonton he is at real risk of losing a series of perhaps the weakest team of the 16 that qualified for the postseason. But having the best player in the universe helps balance things out:
Simply put: Los Angeles was the better team if you measured the nine strikers below against the nine strikers. This is true for possession time, true for goal odds, and true for goals. But the erasure of the Edmonton first kings was so extraordinary that it balanced the book, and then some. After the show on Saturday night, I was curious how McDavid’s dominance over Los Angeles would cope with some of the better playoff performances we’ve seen over the years. If we look at the net expected goals (blind for goalkeepers important in this context) over the last 15 years, we have seen many dominant skaters – from Detroit Red Wings to Pavel Datsyuk, two-time Stanley Cup defending champion Tampa Bay Lightning, and decades of your dominance in the Watong team.
And yet, none of these skaters can hold a candle for what McDavid did in this initial round:
Whether it’s Datsyuk’s witchcraft in 2008 or what Nathan McKinnon individually achieved in the balloon in two rounds in 2020, we have a clear starting point for what we consider exceptional, one-sided hockey.
The best performances over the years have seen players create 1.5 to 2.0 of the expected goal advantage for every 60 minutes played, which is the type of thing you see from teams in the caliber of the Stanley Cup. McDavid has just published +2.8. (If the points are your thing, don’t worry, the conclusion is the same. McDavid averaged 5.6 points in 60 minutes, which is again the best number we’ve seen in 15 years.)
Maybe the teams will be gradually more effective in slowing down McDavid for the rest of the postseason. Of course, the Colorado Avalanche (to name just one team) that remain on Edmonton’s path for now are armed with weapons to do just that.
But after what we’ve just witnessed in the last two weeks, who’s stupid enough to bet on McDavid?
not me.
Data via Natural Stat Trick, developing hockey, NHL.com
Add Comment