Quote:
Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch
I've always said that he's an exceptional player when he has McDavid, but an average player that can't really drive his own line and is a give away machine without McDavid.
Is he really earning his contract? That to me is debatable.
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Is he earning his contract? Seriously, that is the question you are asking yourself. The guy is running away with the scoring lead and is the 25th highest contract in the league. Does the guy benefit from playing with McDavid, of course he does. McDavid is an elite talent of the comparable to Crosby, Malkin, and Ovechkin, anyone would benefit from playing with them. That said I think that McDavid also benefits from playing with Draisaitl as well.
A big, strong, durable center who has scored over 100 points in the past two years (including a 50 goal season), is an incredibly rare commodity in the NHL and the fact that he is signed for 5 more years at the same rate just increases his value.
In terms of elite NHL players, his contract is a bargain, with the only better contracts I can think of being MacKinnon and Pastrnak.
The team around McDavid and Draisaitl sucks, but that isn't their fault. The fact is that they have a mediocre overly expensive defense, a weak middle six and two iffy goaltenders, all while spending over 6 million a year on buyouts, retained salary, and buried contracts- a large portion of which will be carried over for years to come. Good NHL clubs don't waste that much money on players who don't play for them. This is a team that has tried for crappy quick fixes for the better part of a decade in order to mask the fact that their drafting sucks, their development sucks, and their city sucks (in comparison to other NHL cities) so that players don't want to come play or stay here. No one is going to choose Edmonton (or most other Canadian markets) over playing in New York, Florida, or California... that is why good management is essential and the Oilers have lacked that for a very long time.