Good morning, everyone, and a happy Monday to all of you. I’ve got a fresh mailbag ready to go after taking your questions and sending them to the crew for their take on whatever is on your mind. This week, we’re discussing Connor McDavid’s scoring, the 4 Nations Face-Off, the World Cup, and more. If you’ve got a question you’d like to ask, email it to me at baggedmilk@oilersnation.com or on Twitter at @jsbmbaggedmilk, and I’ll get to you as soon as I can.

He’s played eight fewer games than Nathan MacKinnon (league-leader). If McDavid produced his season average (1.45 pts/game) in those eight games he’d be at 83 pts. MacKinnon is at 87. Only thing I’d like to see is him shoot more. He’s averaging the lowest shot total per game since 2019.

Not concerned at all. Not every season is going to be 82 games of dominance from McDavid and as long as he cranks it up come playoff time, I really don’t care how he plays in the regular season. He’s still been really good, just not quite up to his usual standard, and it’s worth noting his standard is way higher than any other players in the league. He’ll be fine.

I think what’s most concerning for me is his goalscoring rate. At five-on-five, his 0.85 goals per hour are the fewest of his career, and a drop from his previous low of .92, which came last year. His shots-on-goal rate is down, but his shot attempt and expected goal rates are at about career average rates. It’s worth noting his assists rate has dipped, too, and part of me wonders if his scoring struggles have to do with slow offensive starts for Zach Hyman and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins.

I’m not overly concerned about McDavid’s ability to create offence, but what I will say is that I wish he was more selfish and was willing to deploy the shot-first mentality that saw him score 64 goals a couple of years ago.

It is what I expected. Rivalry Saturday was great with Sweden/Finland and Canada/USA. The first nine seconds in CAN/USA game were unreal. I still can’t believe some people thought these games would be like the All-star game. WTF.

It’s been absolutely electric. Every game has produced some incredible storylines and the actual hockey itself has been amazing. Getting back to having true best-on-best hockey every two years is going to be such a nice routine. The fact we were deprived of seeing this for so long is criminal.

It’s been so much better than I anticipated. I thought it would be a good, entertaining tournament that would be a better alternative to the All-Star Game, but all the games have been tremendous. I don’t think anyone expected what we saw in that game between Canada and the United States.

I got way more into it after going to the Canada vs. Sweden game on Wednesday at the Bell Centre. Seeing that the players were absolutely into it got me excited about what was to come, and I’m honestly surprised how into it I am after that first game.

Nope. Alex Pietrangelo was too banged up to go. There are many others who would gladly go. Drew Doughty was very vocal in wanting to go. Thomas Harley jumped at the chance to join the team during the tournament. Injury can happen at any point, players won’t worry about it. Sure, it sucks if it happens, but that is part of the game.

No. Players take way too much pride in playing for their national teams and unless a player is actually dealing with an injury, we won’t just see guys bow out for no reason and I really don’t think an NHL team would tell a player to not go solely for the reason of risking injury. There would have to be other factors at play.

I don’t think we’ll ever see that. Given the 4 Nations and World Cup are league-sanctioned events, there’s buy-in from all corners of the NHL. Team clubs don’t want their players getting hurt, but that’s been their concern since the dawn of international tournaments.

I don’t think so. These guys want to represent their country, and I think it would cause issues with the player and organization if the team robbed them of that opportunity. Injuries are certainly a concern, but I don’t think that would be enough to keep these guys from pulling a Canada jersey going forward.

1987 Canada Cup final. Russia/Canada. I was a teenager and the games were unreal, with lots of goals and great energy. It made me enjoy hockey even more.

Obviously ‘The Golden Goal’ ranks at #1 for me. Outside of that, that overtime between Team North America and Team Sweden at the 2016 World Cup of Hockey is always one that I remember. It was one of our first times being exposed to 3v3 overtime and it was absolutely electric.

It’s got to be Sidney Crosby’s Golden Goal for me. I vividly remember watching that game at my parent’s house and freaking out when he scored.

It’s easily Crosby’s Golden Goal from Vancouver. I was in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, at the time and I woke up in the middle of the night to watch the game and drink beers by myself. Watching the Americans battle back and push the game to overtime was so stressful, and having Sid end the game in OT after we all heard him scream out “IGGY” is something that I’ll never forget. Honourable mention has to go to the 2002 Olympic team when our man Smytty was representing Canada alongside the likes of Mario Lemieux, Joe Sakic, Steve Yzerman, Martin Brodeur, Chris Pronger, Jarome Iginla, Paul Kariya, and so many other ridiculous players from my youth.

They need goals from wingers playing with McDavid and Draisaitl not named Hyman.

They need to get more consistent goaltending from Stuart Skinner and they need their high-end offensive players to kick it into high gear in the final few months of the season, as we’re accustomed to seeing them do. If those two things happen, the Oilers will clear the Golden Knights.

Strong goaltending is going to be a key for them, as their defensive metrics otherwise have remained strong. McDavid finding his offensive game would be huge, which is something to expect. In each of the last two seasons, he’s averaged a hair under two points per game after the All-Star Break. More consistent offence from their bottom six would be a huge benefit, too.

We need Stuart Skinner to level up a little bit. He’s very good when he’s at his best, but it’s the moments between those highs that he needs to smooth out. The other thing I would say is that the depth scorers — Arvidsson, Podkolzin, RNH, Henrique, etc — need to pick it up.

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