McDavid, Oilers power play struggles early in NHL playoffs

Early playoff scoring droughts are usually more important for market psychology than for fundamentals: they create a fast, visible swing in fan/media sentiment and can meaningfully move short-term engagement expectations without changing the longer-run value of the franchise. The key second-order effect is not on team quality alone, but on the monetization stack around the team — local ratings, secondary-ticket pricing, in-arena spend, and sponsor activation all soften when a star-driven offense looks ordinary for even a small sample.

The larger risk is that this becomes a narrative trade from here: if the series shifts to Anaheim and the top line remains muted, the market can quickly reprice the playoff run from “deep postseason” to “single-round volatility,” which tends to pressure discretionary spend assumptions for adjacent media inventory. That matters most over the next 1-3 weeks, not months; short playoff series have asymmetric sentiment impact because every game resets the story and compresses the feedback loop between performance and audience behavior.

The contrarian view is that early postseason underperformance by an elite player is often mean-reverting rather than predictive, especially when the sample is dominated by power-play variance. If anything, the current setup can be bullish for a bounce because expectations are now lower and playoff production tends to cluster around adjustments, not pure talent regression. The consensus may be overweighting the zero-scoreline and underweighting the likelihood that special-teams efficiency normalizes once the opponent has to defend at home.