mightyreasoner wrote on Tue, 11 May 2021 14:01

The problem with that set of tweets and data selection is the implication and conclusion: that if you were to take all of Tyson Barrie's minutes this season and divide it up between Adam Larsson and Ethan Bear, not only would McDavid's numbers be just as ridiculous as they are now, they'd actually be even better! Adam "first pass" Larsson (9 points) and Ethan Bear (8 points) are apparently the key to unlocking more offense out of McDavid and pushing him to 117 points instead of 102 points. Never mind that both of those guys have been with McDavid for years, the data selected seem to implicate that if those two were playing with McDavid instead of Tyson Barrie, McDavid would have hit 100 points weeks ago. I don't think anyone is going to question that McDavid helps Barrie more than Barrie helps McDavid. We all know the less time Barrie is playing in his own end, the better (and if there is an argument to make against him, that's the one, that his offensive benefit doesn't outweigh his defensively liability, though as those tweets point out, he's outscored opposition this year when on the ice). But it's just such a jump in my mind to conclude that Larsson and Bear playing with McDavid would cause him to be produce at a higher rate offensively this year than he has. It really feels like there is something more to be seen in the data, something missing, or else Larsson's agent should be pointing this exact scenario out in contract negotiations this summer.

Literally no one, not one single person, is saying that if you replaced Barrie's minutes with Larsson that McDavid would score more. The numbers don't even suggest that. In terms of RHD ranked by minutes played with McDavid, McDavid scores:

Barrie - 3.41 pts/60
Bear - 4.12 pts/60
Larsson - 2.12 pts/60

Again, my point isn't to disparage what Barrie has brought to the Oilers this year. He was a good signing for the price and term they got him for. And I'm not even saying that if you flipped Barrie's and Bear's minutes that McDavid would have scored more (although I'm not not saying that either ). I just don't think there's any indication that the gap between the two is so large as to justify signing Barrie for $5M - $7M on a long term deal. https://www.naturalstattrick.com/playerreport.php?fromseason =20202021&thruseason=20202021&stype=2&sit=5v5&am p;stdoi=std&rate=y&v=t&playerid=8478402

Oilers Goal Differential
17/18: 234 GF / 263 GA (-29)
18/19: 232 GF / 274 GA (-42)
19/20 (82 game pace): 257 GF / 254 GA (+3) in 64 games
2021 (82 game pace):269 GF / 235 GA (+34) after 38 games