McDavid is breaking hockey as we know it

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Connor McDavid is breaking hockey as we know it.

That’s not hyperbole. When was the last time we’ve seen a player dominate game after game the way McDavid has this postseason? I joked last week the NBA and NHL switched roles this postseason – the NBA conference finals are ripe with team-dominated basketball, while NHL fans are watching a superstar of the highest order completely take over games.

That’s the ironic part. We have seen a number of first-ballot Hall of Fame players in the NHL over the past 20 years. Sidney Crosby, Alexander Ovechkin, Pavel Datsyuk – the list goes on and on. The bar they set for what would be considered exceptional performance in a team-dominated sport like hockey could be touched only by the most talented players in the world.

But none of these players is the appropriate comparable for what McDavid is doing right now. In fact, McDavid isn’t even an appropriate comp for what McDavid is doing right now. His play has forced us to reimagine how much a star player can carry a team in the NHL. That’s no slight to the rest of the Oilers. It’s reality. It’s the type of question we tend to ask about NBA legends like Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, or LeBron James. Not a hockey player.

I will continue to emphasize how unprecedented this is. The below chart shows an overlay of Edmonton’s scoring with McDavid on the ice over the course of his career, as well as expected rate-scoring against (blind to goaltending performance). McDavid is posting unprecedented offensive numbers this postseason, and he’s doing it through comprehensive puck dominance that yields little in the defensive zone:

Yes, you are reading that correctly. Over the course of the postseason, the Oilers are averaging