April Fool’s Day: Top 3 NHL teams that fooled us all in 2020

2. Edmonton Oilers

What I thought: The Edmonton Oilers were a team that would have to lean too much on Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl. They comfortably missed the postseason during the 2018-19 season despite both players having outstanding seasons. The mere presence of McDavid and Draisaitl would have them somewhere decently close to the postseason, but I didn’t have much faith in them.

Why I was wrong: A few things stick out to me. First of all, Draisaitl’s a lot better than I thought he was. Heck, he’s a lot better than anyone thought. Draisaitl was coming off a season with an inflated shooting percentage of 21.6%. Only 13 players in the salary cap era had a shooting percentage of at least 21% while playing in at least 60 games, so I thought Draisaitl was due for some regression.

In theory, I was right! His shooting percentage dropped to just 19.7%, which is still the third-highest mark in the NHL (minimum 50 games played. But clearly, Draisaitl didn’t experience nearly as much regression as many thought.

Also, I thought Connor McDavid was by far the Oilers’ best player. This season, Draisaitl has proven the race is a heck of a lot closer than I thought. And man, that’s saying something. I still think it’s McDavid, but now an argument for Draisaitl makes sense.

Other factors include their elite penalty kill and power play, their improved defense under Dave Tippett, and Mike Smith somehow being a really good goalie again this late in his career. Again, the weak Pacific Division clearly helped the Oilers. But I’ll eat crow when I need to, so Oilers fans, if you want to serve me some, I deserve it and I like mine fried.