STICKHANDLING SKILLS
NHL’s best player will never say it, but GM Chiarelli needs to add more talent to roster
The Oilers’ Connor McDavid and Coyotes prospect Dylan Strome take part in a drill during the 2018 BioSteel Pro Hockey Camp in Toronto Monday. McDavid has earned the right to demand more from the Oilers, but he’s too polite, Steve Simmons writes.
Somewhere there must be a key to unlock the deepest thoughts of Connor McDavid, the most creative, innovative, prolific player in hockey.
He is all genius on the ice, but a little tight and a touch uncomfortable when confronted by cameras and lights and microphones.
Hockey players are often trained this way, taught to be intentionally boring by spindoctor agents who think it’s the safe way to go. They’re asked to be stoically dull, even if they are not by nature. They’re counselled to keep their opinions to themselves even when they may be passionate about something.
There is little doubt McDavid is passionate about his job and profession. He wants to be the best. Best in the game, best in the world. Arguably that is where he finds himself after three NHL seasons. And like so many superstars in so many fields, he wants to push limits and get better every year.
He’s already playing the game at a speed with the puck that no one has played at before him. Next on his agenda: scoring more goals. He knows he can skate. He knows he can pass. He knows how well he sees the ice. What he wants to find out next: Can he score more goals? Can he lap the field the way Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux once lapped the field?
In three NHL seasons, he leads the league in points per game. He’s third in scoring behind Patrick Kane and Sidney Crosby and only because he played about 40 games fewer than them. He has won two scoring titles in a row.
But 15 players have scored more goals than him through three seasons.
McDavid scored 26 goals in his final 33 games last season. It left him wondering.
“I’ve always said I want to score more,” he said, holding court at the annual BioSteel camp at St. Michael’s Arena in Toronto. “That’s what I want to do. Find ways to score. I think I’m a good passer. There’s a knack to putting the puck in the net that I seemed to find late in the year last year.”
That’s the plan: Score more. The other, more important, plan: Win more.
This is where you’d really want to hear McDavid unplugged rather than the self-edited version. The Oilers were downright lousy last season. McDavid, great as he played, couldn’t carry his team into the playoffs. In hockey, one player who isn’t a goalie can’t do that. He scored more than anyone in hockey, was voted best player by the players, and was basically disregarded for the Hart Trophy because the Oilers were closer to last than first.
McDavid said, with a straight face and seemingly a touch of sincerity, that it’s a good thing general manager Peter Chiarelli basically accomplished nothing this summer in trying to upgrade the Oilers’ talent. McDavid not only said he is OK with this, but that it’s fine with him.
“I think it’s a good thing, keeping everyone together,” McDavid said. “I think, we didn’t want to go in and blow it up. Peter (GM Chiarelli) said if there’s a move to be made, he’s going to make it. If there wasn’t, he’d leave it all together and we’re happy with that.
“I’m confident everyone is going to come back and we get to where we were about two years ago, when everyone was buzzing, all together.”
Maybe McDavid is the eternal optimist. He has the power of contract and production and status in the game to say whatever he wants; to call for change if he believes change is necessary.
Few players reach that level. McDavid is there now and what we really don’t know is if he thinks leaving this lousy Oilers team together was prudent. All we know is what he’s said for publication.
He is still just 21, still a kid in many ways, still playing the part of the robotic, say-nothing hockey player.
It’s a safe place to be. But really, wouldn’t you like to know what he thinks about his team and about anything else? He is bright and opinionated and thoughtful — until the cameras come on. The lights, in this case, too often can be silencing or deceptive.