Toronto Maple Leafs Need to Spoil Connor McDavid’s Homecoming

After the Edmonton Oilers destroyed them last week, the Toronto Maple Leafs need redemption on Connor McDavid’s homecoming.

It’s a real shame that the Toronto Maple Leafs never won the NHL Draft Lottery during Connor McDavid’s year, but the team didn’t pretty well by drafting Mitch Marner. Those two are clearly the best players from the 2015 NHL Entry Draft, but it’s crazy to see just how ahead McDavid still is, points wise.

In 553 games, McDavid has 293 goals and 821 points, compared to Marner who has 161 goals and 534 points in 491 games played. Marner’s stats are amazing, yet he looks like an AHLer compared to McDavid.

During Wayne Gretzky’s career, the “Great One” finished with 894 goals and 2857 points in 1487 games played, which would represent a rate of 0.60 goals per game and 1.92 points per game.

McDavid’s goal-scoring’s been picking up steam lately, but he still has rate of 0.52 goals per game and 1.48 points per game at the moment.

Let’s say McDavid is able to stay healthy and play 20 seasons or roughly 1600 games, he would be on pace to finish with 832 goals and 2,368 points. The fact that when it’s all set-and-done that McDavid will probably hit 2,000 points is insane. Gretzky is the only person in NHL history to hit the 2,000 point mark, but if everything goes according to plan, McDavid will do so as well and could finish his career as the best player of all-time.

Toronto Maple Leafs Need to Spoil McDavid’s Homecoming

They’ll more than likely make it, but the Edmonton Oilers are not guaranteed a playoff berth at this point in the season, which is hilarious. They have a nine-point advantage on the Calgary Flames with 16 games to play, which should be enough, but we’ve seen crazier things happen.

Although they’re not true rivals, it feels like the Oilers and Leafs have come to hate each other, based on familiarity and talent.

Edmonton has seemingly taken all of Toronto’s scraps (Tyson Barrie, Cody Ceci, Zach Hyman, Jack Campbell, etc.) over the past few years and the combination of Leon Drasaitl, Connor McDavid, Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner all playing in the same game has created incredible theatre.

As a result, Toronto Maple Leafs fans (or maybe it’s just me) loves watching Edmonton fail. The Oilers’ franchise should have been set-up and started how the Pittsburgh Penguins did with Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, but they’ve failed to win.

I know that’s ironic coming from a Leafs fan, but you need to find humor in something other than your own team failing to advance in the First Round every year.

It should be another great match-up between the Leafs and Oilers on Saturday night, but let’s hope the hometown can stop McDavid tonight, who’s been on an incredible heater this season.