If you are criticizing for having fewer points without McDavid kn his line can you are least acknowledge that he spent a ton of time away from McDavid dragging around Lucic and an revolving door whose best names include Sam Gagner and Jesse Pulujarvi?
I have acknowledged on many counts that his situation without McDavid is one of the most difficult of any player in the NHL. This is what makes him such a hard player to evaluate - he spends 2/3 of his time in one of the most favorable situations in the NHL with Connor, and then 1/3 of his time in one of the least favorable situations. Because of this, I don't really tend to have a problem with people who throw his name into top-5 or top-10 discussions; even if I don't agree with that, it's not something I definitely consider to be objectively wrong or whatever because I'm not 100% certain where I would rank him myself. When I see something like a Seth Jones for Draisaitl proposal, I actually think that the value is in favor of Columbus, which is ironic because most Oilers fans call me a hater, and yet some of them think that is fair value.
What I haven't seen Oilers fans acknowledge, is that his performance with that revolving door of scrubs is still not good - even when adjusting for those scrubs. The fact of the matter is that over the course of the past 3 seasons, when the team is without McDavid in either situation, they do better without Draisaitl than they do with him. (And they do quite poorly in both situations) To me, this is much more of a problem than his scoring rates without Connor. Now, I know people will argue against this and say that this is because those scrubs play against tougher competition when they're with him. But there are true elite centers around the league who play with scrubs of comparable nature and all of them make their team better than the team is without them. Mark Stone in Ottawa played with guys like Cody Ceci and Zack Smith and always managed to make the team significantly better.
Until Draisaitl can make his team significantly better in the minutes he plays without McDavid, I can't call him a true line driver or elite center. And while I appreciate the analysis from ChaoticOrange which disproves the absurd claims that were being made by joe dirte, I don't think they prove in any way that he is a line driver.
It's not being disingenuous at all.
5on5 he is playing with 4th line players.
Do you expect them to not let their good players play together on the powerplay too? What other spin are you going to pull out of your ass to discredit draisaitl.
You must lose alot of sleep thinking of ways to discredit him.
I don't have an issue with who he plays with on the power play. I'm saying that his super elite non 5V5 production (which does come with Connor) is in no way evidence that he can drive a line. Driving a line at 5-on-5 and scoring in non 5-on-5 situations are two different things. What the poster ChaoticOrange showed was that the
combination of his line driving at 5-on-5 without Connor and his scoring in non 5-on-5 situations would still drive him up to 80 points. But the majority of those 80 points wouldn't be due to his line driving with the scrubs; they would be due to his non 5-on-5 production.
Is there any reason that you have to try and make the discussion so hostile and personal? If you disagree with what I'm saying, then tell me why you disagree.