Mailbag: Pittsburgh’s love for Fleury; Oilers potentially without McDavid

Here is the Oct. 30 edition of the weekly NHL.com mailbag, where we answer your questions asked on X. Send your questions to @drosennhl and @NHLdotcom and tag them with #OvertheBoards.

I saw someone mention that Marc-Andre Fleury means more to Pittsburgh than Pittsburgh means to Fleury. What's your take on that stance? -- @baYsYckwrYteboY

I'll buy that stance and agree with it, but that doesn't mean Fleury takes Pittsburgh for granted. Fleury's forever smile gets bigger when he gets to reminisce about his time in Pittsburgh and with the Penguins. There's an unbridled infatuation he has with the city, the hockey team and the loyal, die-hard, rabid sports fans that make the city a destination for athletes.

However, Fleury's impact on the Penguins and the people in Pittsburgh is bigger than the impact the Penguins and the people in Pittsburgh have had on him. That's a massive statement, but I believe it to be true.

Fleury is about fun, joy, about making people feel good and enjoying it all when he does. That resonates. He's the professional athlete, the future Hall of Famer that you can be friends with. You can approach Fleury and shake his hand. Around him, you can feel like you're a part of his life and not the other way around. There are no walls around Fleury. He breaks them down with his personality, that forever smile, and a humility that makes you feel comfortable.

It's hard to find professional athletes in today's climate like Fleury. He's a bit of a throwback to the time when more professional athletes allowed themselves to be a big part of the community. It's hard to blame them for wanting privacy now. Popularity and social media and autograph seekers and the “gotchya” crowd looking for anything force them and celebrities to put up walls around them for their own protection. Fleury seems to have none of that. That matters in a blue-collar, hard-working city like Pittsburgh. He's one of them even though he doesn't even live there anymore and hasn't played for their hockey team since 2017.

In my opinion, that's why Fleury means more to Pittsburgh than Pittsburgh means to him, even though he's been gone for more than seven years. And, you know what? He also means more to Vegas and more to Minnesota than those markets mean to him for the exact same reasons.

If Nico Hischier maintains this level of two-way center play and Jack Hughes gets back to the level he reached at the start of last year is there a team with a better set of top-two centers? -- @NJDtootant

Yes.

The Edmonton Oilers have Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl. That's the best 1-2 center combination in the NHL. Period. Hard stop. No debate necessary.

The Penguins still have Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin. They're both legends, Hall of Famers, and I don't care that Crosby had only seven points (one goal, six assists) entering Tuesday. He's Sidney Crosby and he's still one of the best players in the world.

The Vegas Golden Knights have Jack Eichel and Tomas Hertl, arguably the best combination of power centers in the NHL. The Florida Panthers won the Stanley Cup with Aleksander Barkov and Sam Bennett. Barkov won the Selke Trophy last season as the best defensive forward in the League. He is without question one of the best centers in the NHL. Bennett is the center who is always in the right place at the right time. He has eight goals in 11 games this season.

I could argue the Colorado Avalanche with Nathan MacKinnon and Casey Mittelstadt belong on this list. MacKinnon's game speaks for itself. Mittelstadt has been solid as a No. 2. The same can be said for Mika Zibanejad and Vincent Trocheck with the New York Rangers, J.T. Miller and Elias Pettersson with the Vancouver Canucks and Roope Hintz and Wyatt Johnston with the Dallas Stars.

To your point, with Hischier and Hughes, the Devils have an elite center duo, too, but to say they're the best duo in the League is a massive stretch when you're talking in a world where McDavid and Draisaitl play on the same team.

Islanders fans thought that with a full camp with Patrick Roy and the two forwards they added that they'd have a better start. No one could see Anthony Duclair getting hurt, but it seems like the same old story once again. When is it time to give a serious look at replacing Lou Lamoriello? -- @MeanMachineLive

This is not about Lamoriello or the general manager's job security. It is Oct. 30, and the Islanders have the same issues that plagued them last season; lack of scoring, depth concerns, inability to hold a lead.

The Islanders, before playing the Anaheim Ducks on Tuesday, were averaging 2.50 goals per game, having been shut out three times in eight games, twice 1-0. Arguably the biggest culprit is forward Mathew Barzal, who did not have a 5-on-5 point through eight games entering Tuesday. He had two assists on the power play, an empty-net goal and an assist on Bo Horvat's overtime goal in the 4-3 win against the Devils on Friday. Barzal is the Islanders' gamebreaker and most skilled forward. He has to produce more, especially at 5-on-5, for New York to be a dangerous offensive team.

Depth is a concern. With Duclair injured, they're missing a left wing on their top line with Horvat and Barzal. Roy likes the second line of Brock Nelson, Kyle Palmieri and Maxim Tsyplakov, and there's no debating Jean-Gabriel Pageau and Anders Lee on the third line, but who is the right wing? The fourth line has been makeshift all season around Kyle McClellan, with Casey Cizikas, Oliver Wahlstrom, Simon Holmstrom, Julien Gauthier, Pierre Engvall, Liam Foudy and Matt Martin all getting a run on it.

Entering Tuesday, the Islanders had already blown a lead in a game nine times this season, the most in the NHL after doing so 54 times last season, which was second-most behind the Columbus Blue Jackets (59). The worst was taking a 3-0 lead in the first period against the Panthers on Saturday only to lose 6-3. They gave away three separate one-goal leads against the Devils on Friday before winning 4-3 in overtime on Horvat's goal.

We've got to see if they can rectify these issues before we start talking job security for anyone.

As we await the injury update on Connor McDavid, what would the tentative plan for the Oilers be without their best player? They are 4-5-1 with a minus-13 goal differential. Is Stuart Skinner the man between the pipes? Could we see a trade? -- @theashcity

There's no plan to replace McDavid other than the old, cliched next-man-up mentality. You can't formulate a reasonable plan to replace the best player in the world, especially this early in the season, when teams are still figuring out what they are and trades are not happening. You have to simply get more out of who you already have, and for the Oilers that means everybody, including Draisaitl, who has 10 points (six goals, four assists) in 10 games, including three games without a point. No other forward except for McDavid (three goals, seven assists) has more than four points. Production must increase across the board.

Skinner has to pick up his game. There's no other real option. Calvin Pickard is not the goalie who can handle the load. A Vezina Trophy candidate isn't going to magically show up in Edmonton. It's on Skinner, who is 2-4-1 with a 3.51 goals-against average and .872 save percentage. Yes, the Oilers have to be better in front of him, but he has to stop being leaky too.

Eventually, the Oilers will look at the trade market, but I think it's more for a middle-pair defenseman with size than a forward who can score or a new No. 1 goalie. This is a good team with players who to date have underperformed. If McDavid is out it's going to get harder, but the depth and talent is there for the Oilers to handle it.

Not a single team below .500 in Atlantic Division. Has this ever happened before this far into a season? -- @JimmyBurnsy

It's not as rare as you may think.

First, to clarify, you sent me this question Monday, when every team in the Atlantic Division had a .500 or better points percentage, including four teams that were 4-4-1; the Detroit Red Wings, Montreal Canadiens, Boston Bruins and Buffalo Sabres. The Ottawa Senators were 4-4-0.

It's easy to forget since it's two years ago, but every team in the Atlantic Division had a .500 or better points percentage through October. It also happened in the 2021-22 season, when every team in the Metropolitan Division with a .500 or better points percentage through October.

That information is courtesy of NHL Stats. There's no reason to go further back because we're talking twice in the past three seasons that it happened. The question, though, is what does it mean and what should it tell us?

In 2022-23, the Montreal Canadiens were 5-4-0 for 10 points and a .556 points percentage through October. They hung in through November, too, going 6-6-1 in that month to have a .523 points percentage through 22 games. Then they won four of 15 games (4-9-2) in December and unraveled from there, finishing last in the Atlantic Division with 68 points (31-45-6) and a .415 points percentage. On the flip side, the Boston Bruins were 8-1-0 through October and never slowed until the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

In 2021-22, the Columbus Blue Jackets had a .625 points percentage through eight games in October and .600 through 20 games to get to the end of November; they finished their 82-game season with a .494 points percentage. The New Jersey Devils had a .643 through seven October games and .550 through 20 games by the end of November; they finished with a .384.

All that says is the sample size we have this season is still too small. That is why every season we talk about U.S. Thanksgiving as being a notable point in the NHL regular season. It's typically at or approaching the 20-game mark for most teams and more information is available. You can see trends developing. You can tell the direction teams might be headed. The good news for every team in the Atlantic Division is that they are setting themselves up to be in the race instead of in the chase. But that's it for now.