It would have been nice to have real analytics writers during the Pulju+McDavid era.
From what little glimpses of advanced metrics we saw, McDavid did have his best results with Pulju that year. He created chances and goals at the highest rate with him. That likely came down to Pulju's basically only NHL level skill was transition/neutral zone defense that he used to create a bunch of extra possessions for McDavid who was in absolute god mode and was having probably the best stretch of one-man rush hockey ever played in the league.
It would have been interesting for someone to break down stuff like neutral zone break-ups and solo rush numbers instead of the just seeing the Oilers "blogosphere" reference GF% and xGF%.
The media have access to those types of numbers, so I don't know if it just doesn't generate enough money/clicks or if it's just too much actual journalism for them. Like Gregor put out an interesting article a few years ago that broke down how the Oilers defensemen exit the zone and how they ranked amongst the other defenseman around the league using SportsLogIQ data. I don't really understand why Sportsnet or someone that already pays for SportsLogIQ isn't putting out articles using their data on the regular.
I'll give you the breakdown. It's easy
JP wasn't good in the neutral zone. He was just there WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY to early, so the analytics reflect that he was in good positions defensively. He never carried a puck in EVER and rarely got caught deep cuz stopped skating at the blueline. He abandoned cycles like crazy also. He left that to McDavid and co.
The result for McD was that he didn't have to play defense, hence, why he was accused several times of being lackluster in that department, but cuz he's so gifted offensively, his #'s benefited.
I know he's not having a runaway season this year offensively, and I have no idea what the anyltics say, nor do I care, but his defense has been top notch this year. He is the first guy back most of the time, and he's broken up more threats than one can count. I'd say he's more gawd like this year than last tbh
Federov was one of the most dominant offensive players of his time. Then Bowman pulled him aside and asked if he could focus on more D as Stevie Y would provide the offense, and winning cups also takes defense. Federov went from top 5 point totals to mid totals, but was getting Selke nods like crazy, But I'm sure some "analytics" would show he regressed, or some fans would read it that way
McD is a better player this year imo