Can Connor McDavid still win the Calder?
At last.
Tuesday night marks the return of teenage wonder Connor McDavid, who will once again grace the Edmonton Oilers lineup after requiring a 37-game absence to mend a fractured left clavicle.
His derailed rookie season will always be a "what if?" But for now, and for the remaining 32 games, let's focus on another question pertaining to the 19-year-old phenom: Why not?
McDavid still has time to campaign for, and perhaps still win, the Calder Trophy. Here's what he must do to make it happen:
**
It's an arbitrary benchmark, sure, but let's establish 50 points (or the threshold Artemi Panarin appears primed to clear sometime this week) as the minimum in building a strong enough case for consideration.
For 50, McDavid needs 38 points in his 32 remaining games. That means he must score 1.19 points per outing throughout the final two-and-a-half months of the season, or a rate higher than any player this season save Patrick Kane.
In other words, to have a chance to win the Calder - at least based on our arbitrary threshold - McDavid's output from here on out must be at an Art Ross pace.
His point-per-game production, which he'll pick up at a greater clip than Panarin's, should carry weight. But even with 50, McDavid would finish with fewer points than any top rookie in a non-lockout season over the last decade.
He needs 41 points - 1.28 per game - down the stretch to exceed Gabriel Landeskog's trophy-winning total in 2011-12.
There is perhaps another route to Las Vegas.
Minus two weeks at the start of December, the Oilers have been spinning their wheels, toiling at the bottom of the lowly Pacific Division all over again.
Making up 33 points to win the rookie scoring title is out of the question if Panarin stays healthy, even for a talent like McDavid, but leading the Oil into the postseason isn't quite out of the realm of possibility.
If he galvanizes his teammates to the point that they make a four-spot leap in the division standings, you could certainly make the argument that despite scoring disparity, McDavid's value is greater than that of the complementary attacking piece the 24-year-old Chicago Blackhawks winger has been all season.
Dylan Larkin, Max Domi, Jack Eichel, and Shayne Gostisbehere will have their say, but if McDavid rescues the Oilers from the Western Conference gutter and brings playoff hockey to Edmonton for the first time in a decade, he'll fly all-expenses paid in June.