Do teams play us harder due to McDrai?

[Mr Positive]

I would not be surprised if teams and even players circle the Oilers on the calendar in order to show their stuff vs two of the best players in the world.

The bright side of that is that if that hurts us in the regular season, it shouldn't matter at all in the playoffs. There's no bias of effort and both teams are 100% focused on just each other.

 

[bone]

I would not be surprised if teams and even players circle the Oilers on the calendar in order to show their stuff vs two of the best players in the world.

The bright side of that is that if that hurts us in the regular season, it shouldn't matter at all in the playoffs. There's no bias of effort and both teams are 100% focused on just each other.

Yeah. And look at Pittsburgh's team. They haven't had to rely on President Trophy wins (zero) to get an easier first round opponent during their 10 year run. If fact they even only won their Conference in regular season once over the ten year run and their division just 4 times out of ten.

They'd win enough to get home ice advantage in the first (or get close to) then come playoffs their competition isn't really any more dialed in than they normally would have faced. As a result their strict win/loss percentage (i.e. excluding Bettman points) through the ten year stretch that featured 4 Stanley Cup appearances was basically the same regular season vs. playoffs (.594 vs. .592)

 

[JBear]

I don't think so. I think teams come up with a game plan to smother McDrai to contain them and hope to outscore the rest of the team. We may have decent secondary scoring but a lot of it runs through McDrai.