K so Drasaitl has played a great season defensively. If we're talking about who played better defensively, it goes to Drai no question. He has a VERY god +/-

Actually, I'll question that immediately. He hasn't had a good season defensively, neither has McDavid and +/- is one of the worst stats in the league and isn't recognized with much value at all when analyzing players. But one of the best stats to evaluate players defensive impact and it's highly valued in analyzing players is xGA (expected goals against).

At 5v5 (lower is better):
Draisaitl - 26.7
McDavid - 26.1
Marner - 14.3
Matthews - 13.7

Matthews and Marner are far, far better defensively than both of McDavid and Draisaitl

Fair I do want to see where you got those stats from though.

Draisaitl produces more points then Marner.

In 54 games Drai has 30 goals and 51 assists for 81 points.

In 54 games Marner has 20 goals and 47 assists for 67 points.

Drai has more assists and Drai is more of a shooter than a passer. PLUS marner gets paid way more then Drai and Drai is better. Plus Marner is a pure passer but Drai still has more assists

Free stats like that are available on hockey-reference.com or if you subscribe to JFresh hockey on patreon or go to evolving-hockey.com you can find a lot of analytics on players.

& as I said, Marner is far better defensively than Draisaitl and that closes the gap from the offensive numbers. The thing with Draisaitl is that he doesn't produce that highly away from McDavid. As I pointed out in comment #15 in this thread, Draisiatl has McDavid factored into 78% of his points and 70% ofDraisaitl's goals have McDavid with an assist, and 46.6% of those McDavid as the primary assist on the play. Now you might wanna try to argue Marner has Matthews to help him, which is somewhat true, but of Matthews' 40 goals this season, Marner has an assist on 62.5% of them and he's the primary assit on only 37.5% of those, both are much less than McDavid helping Draisaitl out.

Again, if you look at analytics here, xGF (expected goals for) is one of the better ways to see who's generating offence:

At 5v5 (higher is better):
Draisaitl - 16.1
McDavid - 23.1
Matthews - 32.2
Marner - 33.9

Now these are just numbers of offence that should have contributed to goals and don't take into account finishing rates which would be why McDavid and Draisaitl are both lower. But this shows that even the offensive side of the game between Draisaitl and Marner is not what people think. Draisaitl is a better finisher, that's kinda where the line stops. Marner is the better defensive player, better playmaker, better offensive creator. Draisaitl just gets all the attention because he finishes McDavid's plays and points catch the headlines more than what drives the play.

I'm an Oilers and a Leafs fan btw.

Draisaitl put that debate to bed though last year when people said that he only is goo cause of McDavid. He does play on his own line you know. But let's be honest would you rather have McDavid and Drai in game 7 of the playoffs or Matthews and Marner

Draisaitl plays on his own line but doesn't produce as well, he only produces when he's with McDavid. & my last comment with the stats shows that. Personally idc what he did last season, McDavid only missed like 10-15 games I think anyways. That's nothing huge.

& in a game 7 matchup, I'm taking Matthews and Marner all day. They can defend McDavid and Draisaitl. I'd be worried about McDavid and Draisaitl being able to defend anything.

Can you send the stats for how many times Marner factored into Matthews' goals?? Im curious

Would love to actually.

Through 50 games this season Matthews has 65 points (40G, 25A). Now the breakdown:

52 EV strength points - 35 of them Marner has factored in on (67.3%)
13 powerplay points - 5 of them Marner has factored in on (38.4%)
65 total points - 40 of them Marner has factored in on (61.5%)
40 total goals - 25 Marner has recorded an assist on (62.5%)
40 total goals - 15 of them Marner had the primary assist on (37.5%)

One thing I didn't mention last comment is the amount of playing time each player has with each teammate which is also extremely important:
Draisaitl has played with McDavid 47.6% of the time on ice.
Matthews has played with Marner 96.4% of the time on ice.

So the only category here where McDavid helps Draisaitl less than Marner helps Matthews is EV strength points. And that's highly affected by the fact that Marner and Matthews play together almost all the time. If Draisaitl was so good, wouldn't he still be able to produce without McDavid since Draisatil plays without him more? But then why does McDavid factor into Draisaitl's points so much?

Here's a little more info on the both of Matthews and Draisaitl to help determine who's better (all stats a 5v5 to make it easier to compare):

Matthews:
xGF - 32.2
xGA - 13.6
corsiFor - 53.9%
FenwickFor - 55.2%
oZS - 57.6%
shooting % - 18.7%
takeaways/giveaways - 47/52
hits - 56
blocked shots - 46
faceoff % - 51.9%


Draisaitl:
xGF - 16.1
xGA - 26.7
corsiFor - 51.7%
FenwickFor - 51.7%
oZS - 54.7%
shooting % - 18.5
takeaways/giveaways - 52/69
hits - 36
blocked shots - 12
faceoff % - 55.8%


Matthews is better than Draisaitl in 8 of 11 categories here. The ones I've picked were to help show different areas of the game and not just pure offence. Some of its defence, some of its offence, and some of it is physical play to help show the more complete player. Matthews comes out on top in most categories.

Matthews >> Draisaitl (and it's not close anymore).

Drasaitl had his big year last season, but this year he's proved that without McDavid he's not the elite player he's hyped up to be because of one good season the year prior.