It’s understandable why some Edmonton Oilers fans are feeling a little more than anxious these days with Connor McDavid still unsigned for the 2026-27 season and beyond. With the team’s recent playoff runs, championship expectations are sky high. But that could all be derailed if the team’s generational talent doesn’t make a formal commitment to the club.

While it’s easy to see the McDavid contract situation from a fan’s perspective, it’s good to at least try to see things from the player and agent perspective. There are plenty of reasons to stay in Edmonton with the teammates, and the positive direction things are going. But where the Oilers organization has failed, McDavid is consistently building a proper team around him. And we can assess this by looking at how the team has performed on the ice when McDavid hasn’t been deployed.

In the ten seasons that McDavid has been with Edmonton, the team has only out-scored opponents twice without him on the ice at even-strength (five on five). And we use even-strength minutes since that’s the game’s natural state when all players are involved and the team is playing offence and defense. It’s where the majority of the game is played, and makes the with-or-without-you (WOWY) analysis more accurate.

The bar graph below has two sets of data, broken down by each season that McDavid has been an Oiler. The first set in orange is the team’s expected goal differential at even-strength (based on the shots and scoring chances generated and allowed by the team – source) without McDavid on the ice by season. And the second set in blue is the actual goal differential without McDavid on the ice.

Let’s start with the actual goal differential (the blue bars). Last season, the Oilers scored 100 goals and allowed 115 without McDavid on the ice at even-strength – a goal-differential of -15 (or a 46 percent goal-share). With McDavid, they were naturally on the positive side, posting a +12 goal differential, or a 55 percent goal-share. This led to the team posting a team goal-differential of -3, a 49 percent goal-share that ranked 18th in the league. The two regular seasons prior, the team was actually pretty good without McDavid – a +7 goal differential in 2023-24 and a +10 goal differential the year before. But before that – yikes. It’s largely on McDavid’s back that the team had any success.

A big reason why the team was so bad without McDavid is that the players they had did a terrible job at controlling the flow of play and were consistently outshot and outchanced – as represented by their expected goal differential (the orange bars). What exacerbated things was the fact that the team posted a shooting percentage well below league levels. And their goaltending was often subpar as well. There were even times where the expected goal differential was slightly in the negatives, but the actual goal differential was even worse because the roster construction and talent level on the team just weren’t good enough.

So if there’s talk about McDavid wanting to wait and see how things go this season and only considering a short-term extension, this is why. The team has made significant strides recently to bolster its front office, including scouting and analytics. But it might be hard for a player to ignore the full ten seasons and recognize that there’s been a lot more rough times than good times. The roster construction hasn’t been good enough for the majority of the time McDavid has been here, and the prospect pool isn’t looking great either – so it’s probably difficult for the player to have faith in the team’s ownership going forward.

Data: Natural Stat Trick

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