I was reading through the revision on #7, Crosby's 2018 more impressive than McDavid's 2023, and hoo boy is that a big one. Crosby's 2018 playoff run is easily defined by 3 percentages - 31%, 21.1%, and 19.5%. He shot 31% on 29 shots, a ridiculous outlier that is double any of his career averages, while he was on-ice at even strength, his line shot 21.1%, a number way out of line of his career (which is 10.7% in the regular season), and on the power play his line shot 19.5%. Nobody has a higher shooting percentage at even strength compared to the power play, unless you're looking at a 12 game sample. That 21.1% shooting percentage means since 23 goals were scored at even-strength that year, there were 109 shots taken while Crosby was on-ice.
If you look at Crosby's next 3 playoff runs, where he put up 5 even strength points in 14 games, on-ice his line went 2/40, 3/35 and 3/72, for a collective 8/147. Regression to the mean [23+8/109+147=31/256, or 12.1%]! I get there are a lot of confounding factors over 4 separate playoff runs, but the numbers are the numbers. Crosby's not going to randomly double his career shooting percentage over a sustained sample. It was 12 games, everything went in for he and his line, and then he got eliminated and the sample ended.
There is an obvious comparison to Ovechkin's 08-09 playoff run of 11+10=21, 90 shots in 14 games, but the simple conclusion is that those 3 highlighted numbers - player shooting percentage, even strength and power play on-ice shooting percentages - are well within Ovechkin's career norms. Ovechkin's playoff shooting percentage was 12.2%, his regular season shooting percentage to that point was 12.2%; his on-ice shooting percentage at even strength was 12.4%, which is higher than his career regular season of 10.5%, but in line with some of his best years; and his on-ice shooting percentage on the power play was 14.5%, right in line with his career 14.8%.
I bring that up not to try and compare an Ovechkin playoff run, but to show how an outlier run can either be supported or unsupported by the underlying numbers. We can acknowledge that Crosby's 2018 run was a good playoffs, but also admit that it was more down to luck in a small sample than any other reason. If we think about their even-strength on-ice percentages compared to their career numbers, Crosby's 21.1%, 23/109 is compared to 10.7%, his normal number would be 12, so he was on-ice for 11 extra goals in that 109 shot sample. Ovechkin's 12.4%, 17/137 is compared to 10.5%, his normal number would be 15, so he was on-ice for 2 extra goals in that 137 shot sample.
Returning to McDavid in 2023, he was unlucky at even-strength (his on-ice shooting percentage was 8.7 on a career of 11.2), but the Oilers went 18/39 on the power play in 12 games, and that shooting luck led to 12 of McDavid's 20 points. Their shooting percentage regressed to the mean the next year, which meant that they just went 22 for 75, a 29.3% clip instead of the 46.2% they had in 2023, but McDavid's even strength on-ice shooting percentage was 12.9%, so he went from 7 even strength points in 12 games to 25 even strength points in 25 games.