After losing 6-3 to the Calgary Flames at Rogers Place on Saturday (Feb. 24), the Edmonton Oilers are now winless in their last three games and just 4-5-1 since the All-Star Break, as they’ve watched their six-point lead over the Los Angeles Kings for third place in the Pacific Division disappear.
Simply put, the Oilers are not playing particularly good hockey right now, and there’s lots of blame to go around, from the net on out: the goalies haven’t been sharp, the defence hasn’t been sound, and the bottom-six isn’t scoring.
But as the Oilers search for solutions, now might be the time to start looking to a place where the fingers rarely point: the centre of Edmonton’s top line.
McDavid Hasn’t Scored in Nine Games
It might seem ridiculous to pin any of Edmonton’s recent struggles on Connor McDavid, considering he’s got the most points (22) in the NHL since the All-Star Break. He’s now up to 89 points this season, to climb to third spot on the NHL leaderboard, and if he keeps up his recent rate of producing over two points per game, he might yet win the Art Ross Trophy for a sixth time in his career.
In the last nine games, McDavid has 21 assists. Not since the magnificent Mario Lemieux during the 1992-93 season has an NHL player recorded that many apples in a span of nine games. It’s an incredible feat.
Related: McDavid Has Record-Breaking Night of Assists vs Red Wings
But McDavid also hasn’t scored a single goal in the last nine games. That’s just one game short of the longest goalless drought of his nine-year NHL career. And that’s alarming.
McDavid Barely on Pace for 30 Goals
It was just last season that McDavid scored a remarkable 64 goals, the third-highest single-season total in the NHL over the last 30 years. That made it six consecutive seasons for McDavid averaging more than 0.5 goals per game.
Following Saturday’s game, Edmonton is now more than two-thirds through its 2023-24 schedule, and McDavid has 21 goals, tied for 46th in the NHL. He’s in the midst of his second slump this season of at least eight games without a goal, which is as many eight-game goal droughts as he had in his entire career coming into this season. He’s not even on pace to score half as many goals as he did one year ago, and barely on pace to score 30 goals, something he’s done every season since his rookie campaign.
McDavid Not Taking Enough Shots
It’s baffling how the greatest player on the planet, in the prime of his career, at age 27, coming off one of the most prolific scoring seasons in a generation, has seen such a steep, sudden drop in his goal output. McDavid was banged up a bit early in the season, but there has been nothing to suggest over the last two-plus months that he’s playing hurt. He’s still flying up and down the ice. He still skates circles around the opposition. He’s still doing jaw-dropping things with the puck. He’s just not putting it in the net nearly as often.
There’s no one reason or simple explanation for McDavid’s goal-scoring decline, but as the legend he’s most often compared to, Wayne Gretzky, famously said, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take” – and McDavid isn’t exactly taking a whole lot of ‘em right now: he’s got just 25 shots on goal over these last nine games in which he’s gone goalless.
For the season, McDavid has 177 shots, tied for 31st most in the NHL. He’s averaging 3.34 shots on goal, which is almost one per game less than last season, and his lowest average since 2019-20.
Just 53.6% of his total shot attempts this season are getting on net, down almost 13% from 2022-23, and his current shooting percentage of 11.9% is the lowest of his career.
When McDavid Scores the Oilers Win
McDavid is on pace to become just the third player in NHL history to have more than 100 helpers in a season, joining Gretzky, Lemieux and Bobby Orr. That would be a spectacular accomplishment, but given the choice between a 100-assist playmaker and a 64-goal sharpshooter, the Oilers right now are probably going with the latter.
Thus far in 2023-24, Edmonton is 15-4-0 (.790 point percentage) when McDavid scores, and 18-16-2 (.528) in games when he doesn’t have a goal. In the prior three seasons combined, he had at least one goal in exactly half of Edmonton’s 220 games; the Oilers won 85 times when he scored, and just 49 times when he didn’t. Simply put, the Oilers win when McDavid scores. And neither has been happening enough lately.
It’s hard to think McDavid’s scoring touch has abandoned him; surely he has it within him to begin lighting the lamp again. He’s the furthest thing from a selfish player, but if he is going to get his name engraved on the Stanley Cup – just like Gretzky, just like Lemieux, and just like Orr – he might have to become more of one. And there’s no better time to start than tonight (Feb. 26), when the Oilers host the Kings in a crucial contest at Rogers Place.
