Edmonton Oilers: Ranking Players Trending Up So Far This Season
By Phil Gretzky
First Player Trending Up
A bit obvious, I know, but we’re talking about the reigning two-time Art Ross champ in Connor Mcdavid – and mind-bogglingly he’s still on track to improve from last season. I wouldn’t doubt it if this year Connor McDavid left his competitors eating his dust.
Mcdavid currently sports a 1.44 PPG number, which projects out to 118 points. His goal scoring is projected at this point at 0.56, which projects out to 46 goals. Right now he has 49 points in 34 games – in other words, we’re not even halfway through the season and by the Tampa game he already hit the halfway to 100 points mark.
He’s excellent in his own end, too – +27 and +20 the last two seasons respectively, and off to a nice start this season with a +7 so far.
Really the only criticisms you could level at Mcdavid – and this is nitpicking I know – are in faceoffs where he’s never cracked the 50% mark in his career but is currently off to a career-best at 46.45%, so he’s making progress. The other area Mcdavid could improve upon is the PK. Right now Mcdavid only spends an average of 22 seconds per game on the PK – to put that in perspective Adam Larsson currently leads the team in PK TOI with 2:17.
Other than that McDavid is earning every penny of his contract and frankly I can’t wait for him to bring this team into the playoffs again in spring 2019.