from Travis Yost of TSN,

Having a dominant first line or a stifling top-pairing is a major competitive advantage in the NHL. Possessing both at the same time can mean the difference between fighting for a playoff spot and being a true Stanley Cup contender.

Some of the most dominant teams in league history had an elite five-man unit capable of taking the air out of games for shifts for long stretches.

The late 2000s Detroit Red Wings could get the Pavel Datsyuk line on the ice with the Nicklas Lidstrom pairing, a silly advantage that guaranteed Detroit would own more than 60 per cent of the shots on a nightly basis. The Chicago Blackhawks (Jonathan Toews’ line with the Duncan Keith pairing) and Boston Bruins (Patrice Bergeron’s line with the Zdeno Chara pairing) of the 2010s had similar success and weren’t knocked off their pedestal for many years.

It’s not difficult to see what those elite units look like in 2022. Two of the most prominent examples probably can be found in Colorado and Vegas, where the unifying of players like Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar, or Jack Eichel and Shea Theodore, has meant staggering advantages for their respective teams. They are, simply put, blowing opponents off the ice. The idea here is that the sum of the parts can be greater than the whole, even when it concerns top-tier players.

That brings me to the Edmonton Oilers and Connor McDavid. McDavid is easily the league’s most dominant player and elevates the play of everyone around him. The Oilers have tried to address the team’s blueline for years with what has been limited success, owing in part to the realities of a hard-cap league where most of the talent skews to the forward position, but also owing in part to misevaluations at the player level.

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