EDMONTON — Alex Ovechkin was talking about the Toronto Maple Leafs earlier this season, and how they can enjoy scoring a lot of goals and trying to win games 6-2. Or, he said, they can buckle down defensively, play a more stout team game, and perhaps build a team that can do so much more.
“It’s up to them how they want to do it,” Ovechkin told the Toronto media back in October. “If they want to play for themselves, or if they want to win a Stanley Cup. They have to play differently.”
Sidney Crosby decided long ago that being the best Pittsburgh Penguin in the offensive zone was fine, but being the best Penguins player in all three zones was even better. Three Stanley Cups later, it’s hard to quibble.
So today, as another Oilers season embarks down a familiar spiral, we pose the question: Does that Ovechkin quote apply just as accurately to Leon Draisaitl, Connor McDavid and the Edmonton Oilers?
“It’s not hard, because we want to win. Connor and I, we’re here to win,” began Draisaitl, who has sprinkled one ‘even’ game into his past 16 performances, against 15 on the minus side for a collective minus-25. “We want to play offensively because that’s what we’re supposed to do. That’s our job just as much as it to defend.
“I have to speak for myself,” he concluded. “I have to find a better line of defending and (limiting) the risk in my game where the defending part comes first.”
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The National Hockey League’s two leading scorers are both minus players: Minus-18 for Draisaitl, minus-7 for McDavid. Chicago’s Patrick Kane (minus-1) is the only other Top 10 scorer whose plus-minus numbers are in the red.
Plus-minus, we all know, is a flawed statistic in a small window of games. It does lend some perspective, however, when viewed over a much longer period of time.
So we looked back over the previous 10 seasons at the Top 5 NHL scorers, a group of 50 players from 2009 to 2019. Do you know how many of those players finished the season with a minus next to their name?
Three players.
Three guys in 10 seasons, as compared to two players this season. That qualifies as an aberration.
“I’m sure there is a balance,” Draisaitl said. “In defending you have to give up offence sometimes. I’m sure there is a balance, and we have to learn that. I have to learn that. It’s something I can do a better job of, to go out with a defending mindset first.”
McDavid (1:02) and Draisaitl (1:01) lead all NHL forwards in average shift length. Crosby is at 50 seconds, though the Penguins utilize two power play units where Edmonton basically uses one.
Installing change in Washington was a lengthy process endured by two coaches, as Bruce Boudreau and Barry Trotz took turns sculpting the Capitals’ game from a dominant regular season brand into something that could finally win four rounds and a Stanley Cup.
“Coaching staff, players and you can see it took us four years with Barry (Trotz) to realize what we had to do,” Ovechkin said. “We make mistakes, coaching staff makes mistakes, then when we get a chance to take another level we all came together and it worked.”
But for the 37 games that Draisaitl spent under Dallas Eakins as a rookie, Tippett is only the second NHL coach for McDavid and Draisaitl. He watched his team get through the first 20 games with few issues this season. But in the next 20 games, Tippett saw opponents buckle down on Draisaitl and McDavid.
“When you’re another team coming in here you say, ‘We’ve got to take those guys away.’ So it gets harder,” Tippett said. “It gets harder for those guys to score, and some frustration creeps in. Now you start trying to do more. You’re chasing the game all the time.
“Drai’s been chasing the game, but he’s been chasing the game because he’s trying to win. He’s not trying to get minuses. It’s got harder and harder for him, because other teams are bearing down,” the coach said. “We need a better team cohesion all the way through. Not relying on those guys so much, and make sure those guys know we’re not relying on them so much. Rely on a team game.”
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It boils down, pretty simply, to whether you’re trying to win Art Ross Trophies or Stanley Cups. And Draisaitl makes it pretty clear what the priorities are for Edmonton’s two superstars.
He knows what we all know, that if you’ve got the skills to be a 50-goal, 100-point player, then becoming more responsible defensively should not be considered an unattainable goal.
“We know we’re capable of doing it, but at some point talking is not good enough. We have to do it,” Draisaitl said. “We’ve been talking about it for a while now.
“Talking can only do so much.”
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