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Winning wasn’t part of the Oilers’ vocabulary when McDavid first joined the team. Edmonton had missed the playoffs in nine straight seasons, often finishing at or near the bottom of the conference standings. McDavid’s first season in Edmonton was more of the same, with the star rookie missing significant time with a broken collarbone and the Oilers finishing at the bottom of the West standings.

App users: Click here to view chart for NHL’s top 10 cap hits for the 2018-19 season.

Things turned around quickly last season with a full year of McDavid, plus the emergence of Draisaitl and goaltender Cam Talbot and some much needed back-end help from newly acquired defenceman Adam Larsson.

“Day 1 of being an Oiler, there was a lot of questions,” McDavid said. “We just hired a new GM (Chiarelli) and a new coach (Todd McLellan) and the team was a little bit in pieces. But with the great work of Peter and his management team and the system that Todd’s put in place, we’ve developed a good team here. Sure, it’s just been one year, but we’re definitely on the right track.”

A generational talent, McDavid is worth his mammoth contract, though the Oilers will need to be creative with their remaining cap space. However, Chicago was able to have success building around Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews. Their cap hits of $10.5 million per season each were the previous league high before McDavid’s extension.

The Pittsburgh Penguins, back-to-back Stanley Cup winners, had to work around the large contracts of superstars Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin.

“There’s challenges in this salary cap world. Some teams have succeeded and some teams haven’t,” Chiarelli said. “Chicago has succeeded up to a point, and other teams like Pittsburgh have made it work, and we have confidence in Connor and his ability on the ice to lead, as he has confidence in us to ice a winning team.”

For his part, McDavid seemed uninterested at all in the talk of figures and cap space at his big press conference.

“It really doesn’t matter how we got to a number. The important thing is I’m going to be here for the next nine years,” he said.