National Post (National Edition)
Are Oilers wasting Mcdavid’s talent?
Somewhere there must be a key to unlock the deepest thoughts of Connor Mcdavid, the most creative, innovative, prolific player in all of hockey.
He is all genius on the ice — and the best person on Earth, Sherry Bassin calls him — but a little tight and a touch uncomfortable when confronted by cameras and lights and microphones and anyone who wants to know his opinion on anything hockey.
Hockey players are often trained this way, taught to be intentionally boring by spindoctor agents who think it’s the safe way to go. Asked to be stoically dull even if they are not by nature. Counselled to keep their opinions to themselves when they may, in fact, be passionate about something.
There is little doubt McDavid is passionate about his profession. He is a hockey player who doesn’t simply want to be a hockey player. He wants to the best. Best in the game, best in the world. And 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 with before him. Next on his personal agenda: scoring more goals. He knows he can skate. He knows he can pass. He knows how well he sees the ice and the blessed vision he was born with. What he wants to find out next: can he score more goals? Can he take his best-in-the-league talent and lap the field the way Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux once did?
So far, in three NHL seasons, he leads the league in points per game and he’s just getting going. He’s third in scoring behind Patrick Kane and Sidney Crosby and only because he played about 30 games fewer than those ahead of him. He has won two scoring titles in a row and a third one now seems like a foregone conclusion.
But so far, 15 players have scored more goals than him through three seasons, yet Mcdavid scored 26 goals in his final 33 games of a disastrous Edmonton Oilers 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 created more offence than anyone else 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 has accomplished nothing this summer in trying to upgrade the Oilers talent. Mcdavid not only said he is OK with this, but for the record, anyhow, said it’s fine with him.
That could be his opinion or it could be he is saying what he thinks he should say for public consumption. Watching him last season at times he looked like Fred Astaire dancing with Wilma Flintstone. The match wasn’t right. But training camp is soon and no one knows quite what to expect from the disappointing Oilers and McDavid said he welcomes the lineup as it stands now.
“I think it’s a good thing, keeping everyone together,” said Mcdavid. “I think we didn’t want to go in and blow it up. Peter (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.”
He’s confident, possibly euphoric. It reminds me a little of Mats Sundin’s captaincy with the Toronto Maple Leafs. Sundin believed in the Leafs’ lineup every year, even when the results told him differently. Every time they missed the playoffs, he thought next year would be different. He was so busy being optimistic he couldn’t see what wasn’t there.
Maybe Mcdavid, at a higher level, with his game for the ages, is the eternal optimist. He has the power now 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 ever 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 has said for publication.
He is still just 21 years old, 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 in hockey? He is bright and opinionated and thoughtful until the cameras come on. The lights, in this case, too often can be silencing or deceptive.