The Edmonton Oilers are off to another fairly disappointing season. While it may not be quite as “disappointing” as last year – a year in which they didn’t make playoffs after being projected as a Stanley Cup contender – their 19-19-3 record is certainly not where Oilers fans would hope to be. Especially seeing as they have one of the best players of all-time suiting up for them.
That player would be Connor McDavid, of course, and it’s become clear that he is pretty much the end-all-and-be-all of the Oilers’ offence. There was another indication of that during Saturday’s 4-0 loss to the L.A. Kings.
Here are the stats from Oilers forwards during the shutout. Notice anything?
Connor McDavid has four shots on goal. Pretty regular, but everyone else? Four shots combined (two from Leon Draisaitl, one from Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and one from Jujhar Khaira).
That is pretty nuts, that there are 12 guys on offence and they only manage to get 8 shots total, half of which were taken by McDavid. Luckily for the Oilers the defence was able to put a few shots on goal, and the team ended with a paltry 16 SOG in total.
If you listen closely enough, you can hear Ken Hitchcock’s hair being torn right out of their follicles. After the game, he didn't even give McDavid credit.
"We had one player show up and play," Hitchcock said. "Darnell Nurse was our best player by a mile ... and that's all we had. We didn't compete. Their best players were their best players. We didn't compete. This is on everybody. When you have one player that competes at a high level in a game like this, it can't be acceptable. There's been too much of this go on in the first 41 games. We win one, and then we take our foot off the gas, and that's exactly what we did."
(H/T (u/GlengarryGlencross)
