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Little doubt out there right now that the new contract Leon Draisaitl signed at midweek was at least something of an overpayment.

While he’s a very good, very young player, the fact that he’s pulling top-10-among-skaters money all of a sudden tells you that everyone involved should know that’s a bit generous. Even if you think his playoff performance was a coming-out party — and hey, why wouldn’t you be convinced he can shoot 27 percent forever? — he’s plainly not a top-10 skater, and he’s plainly not particularly close to that mark.

With that having been said, Peter Chiarelli was faced with that old familiar problem: He couldn’t not-pay for Draisaitl. He couldn’t get cute with an offer sheet. The idea that Draisaitl is worth $8.5 million AAV right now is laughable. Four years into this contract, when he’s still at his peak expected performance level and the cap has probably gone up another 10 percent or so, the odds are much better that he will be worth something approximating that number.

The problem, then, is figuring out what Draisaitl actually “is” in today’s NHL. Is he a fabulous wing man for Connor McDavid? Absolutely he is. But as with any star player’s running buddy, you have to consider the impact that playing with a guy like that has on a player. Put another way, the important thing for Chiarelli to figure out was how much of Draisaitl’s breakout year — 29 goals and 77 points in 82 games — was a product of spending the majority of his time on ice playing alongside the league’s 20-year-old MVP.

Of Draisaitl’s 77 points, more than half (39) came either on McDavid assists or were McDavid goals assisted by Draisaitl. That, obviously, only makes sense. McDavid was on the ice but didn’t have a point on another 14, bumping the total to Draisaitl getting points with McDavid on the ice to 68.8 percent of all his production.

This despite the fact that they only played about 57 percent of Draisaitl’s minutes at 5-on-5 together.

Perhaps more worrying here is that 22 of Draisaitl’s 27 power play points came with McDavid on the ice as well. And that’s at a time when his production on the man advantaged tripled from 5-4-9 to 10-17-27. And again, it’s better to score with McDavid than not-score with him, or at all.

As a quick aside, though, it’s easy to get wrapped up in Draisaitl’s brutal hit his underlying stats take away from McDavid, but his scoring rates are actually more impressive, which is surprising. He also becomes much less of a finisher without McDavid, and way more of a playmaker.

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