Even with that he might have been giving them too much credit.
The Edmonton Oilers were actually a bad team no matter who the goalie was
There is plenty of blame to go around for this early exit, and nobody is immune from it.
McDavid and Draisaitl had a terrible series, and while injuries certainly played a role in both of their performances, the harsh reality is they just simply were not good enough.
What made that such a devastating development is the Oilers never had the depth to make up for a less-than-dominant showing by their two best players. This supporting cast performed worse than just about any supporting cast the two superstars have had in Edmonton, and there was never anybody to help pick up the slack in the event one, or both, struggled.
During the regular season the Oilers were outscored by a 55-86 margin during 5-on-5 play when neither player was on the ice, while also getting badly out-chanced and out-played. They managed only a 48.1% expected goal share in those minutes to go with the lopsided goal differential.
When you combine the lack of depth with the fact that McDavid and Draisaitl were way off their games, the end result was absolutely brutal for the Oilers. They not only lost to a young, upstart Ducks team, but they were mostly dominated by them. Anaheim was nearly unstoppable on the power play and completely dictated the pace of play during even-strength situations.
All of it is just a complete organizational failure, from the front office in assembling such a poor roster, to the coaching staff for looking completely in over its head the entire series, to the players on the ice simply not performing.
This past offseason, McDavid did the Oilers a huge favor when he signed a two-year contract extension for the exact same salary-cap hit as his previous contract. Given the rapidly rising salary cap over the next few seasons, it was essentially a pay decrease for McDavid (and a significant one) as it relates to the cap. That should give the Oilers some extra cap flexibility to build around him.
The fact it was only a two-year deal should have been a concern. It was basically him putting the Oilers on the clock to say they had two years to prove they can build a winner around him.
General manager Stan Bowman has not shown any indication he is capable of that. That is only going to turn up the heat even more going into this offseason. The clock is ticking.