Oilers improvement will come on wing and prayer
Edmonton must find McDavid a capable sidekick while hoping returnees rebound
Connor McDavid isn’t asking for much.
He said he doesn’t need what Patrice Bergeron, Steven Stamkos and John Tavares all have. He’s not looking to build a super line with Ryan Nugent-Hopkins on one side and Leon Draisaitl on the other. He doesn’t have to play with a top-10 scorer or a sniper capable of winning a Rocket Richard Trophy.
His demands are far simpler. When asked what he wants in a winger, the Edmonton Oilers centre described someone who looks more like Pittsburgh’s Jake Guentzel than, say, Tampa Bay’s Nikita Kucherov.
“They don’t have to be the best players in the world,” McDavid said in a one-on-one interview with Postmedia News at last week’s NHL players media tour in Chicago. “As long as they can put the puck in the net and ultimately help you out a little on the ice, I think that’s what you need. You don’t need a guy to score 50 goals. You just need him to quietly do his thing.”
At times, even that was too much to ask for last year. While McDavid scored 108 points, once again leading the league in scoring, the two-time defending Art Ross Trophy winner did it in a vacuum. With the exception of second-line centre Draisaitl, who had 70 points, no other Oiler ranked inside the top 100 in scoring. No one outside those top two even had 25 assists. Think about that for a second. The Washington Capitals had three players not named Alex Ovechkin who each had 50 or more assists. Not including Auston Matthews, the Toronto Maple Leafs had four with at least 40. But in Edmonton, McDavid largely scored his 41 goals on his own.
It was partly why the Oilers, who had the 20th-ranked offence (team goals for) in the league, missed the playoffs. But if you’re looking for McDavid to heap blame on Ryan Strome or Milan Lucic, who combined for 23 goals and 68 points, or even general manager Peter Chiarelli for failing to surround the best player in the world with comparable wingers, think again. McDavid said he shares in the blame. After all, if an unheralded player like Guentzel can produce 48 points on a line with Sidney Crosby, then surely the Oilers captain should be able to do the same with whoever ends up on his wing.
“You look at a team like Pittsburgh where they have the Guentzels of the world and all these supporting players that complement the skill and they make Sid a better player as much as Sid makes them a better player,” McDavid said. “I think that’s what you need throughout your lineup. You need guys to help each other and feed off each other and to have that chemistry.” It appears that Nugent-Hopkins, who had 24 goals and 48 points, will start the season on McDavid’s wing. But the revolving door on the right side is once again open.
There were options out there in the summer that could have made McDavid’s life easier, whether it was free agents James Neal or James van Riemsdyk or even Max Pacioretty, who was traded Monday to Vegas. But salary restraints have limited Edmonton’s ability to round out its roster.
In other words, Edmonton’s going to need a young — and affordable — player to take a step forward and prove he can play top-line minutes. And McDavid said the onus is on him to make it happen.
“I think the best players in the world make the players around them better,” he said. “And I’m always trying to do that. You look at a guy like Sid; he makes everyone on the ice better. That’s what makes his team so dynamic and that’s what separates the star players from the rest. You need that. I think we have the opportunity to do that. We have great centremen and a lot of great wingers that can feed off that.” One option is Ty Rattie, who finished the season on McDavid’s wing and had nine points in 14 games. But look for 19-yearold Kailer Yamamoto, who was returned to junior last season after a nine-game audition, and 20-year-old Jesse Puljujarvi, who had 12 goals and 20 points, to get long looks on the most coveted spot in hockey. “Obviously Yamo got a chance last year and he did everything he could. You can’t say any bad things about him,” McDavid said of the 2017 first-round pick. “Jesse has been plugging away, working at his game and there’s not a lot of people that can play in the NHL at 18, 19 years old and he’s done it.
“Whether some people agree with that or not, it doesn’t matter. He’s been there, he’s learning. He’s only going to become more comfortable. We need him to become the goal scorer that we know he can be.”
If not, well, we know how this is going to look.
They don’t have to be the best players in the world . ... You don’t need a guy to score 50 goals. You just need him to quietly do his thing.