OILERS’ MCDAVID NOTCHES HIS FIRST NHL GOAL
Connor McDavid, right, celebrates his first NHL goal on Tuesday night. The Dallas Stars beat the Oilers 4-2
DA LL AS It wasn’t an end-to-end, backhand-forehand highlight reel goal that will go into the record books but that mattered not. It was a goal. And it was Connor McDavid’s first.
On Tuesday night, with the Edmonton Oilers down 2-1 against the Dallas Stars, the rookie deflected a shot from defenceman Andrej Sekera past Kari Lehtonen, lifting an enormous weight off the shoulders of the 18-year-old.
It was his third NHL game, which coincidentally was when Wayne Gretzky scored his.
“I was excited but a lot of it was relief. It’s just the pressure that there is these days,” McDavid said after the Oilers were defeated 4-2 and left with an 0-3 record to show for their start to the season.
McDavid, who had put away 44 goals in his final 47 games with the Erie Otters, arrived in Dallas without a point in his first two games — which was only punctuated by the fact that Jack Eichel, drafted by the Buffalo Sabres after the Oilers selected McDavid first overall in the June draft, had notched his first two goals in his first three games.
It was a detail that drew attention on social media and on the talk shows.
“Obviously not the way you want to end that game,” he continued, “(but) it’s something I’ll remember for the rest of my life. Pretty special to get it out of the way.”
The Oilers dug a 2-0 hole for themselves after an abysmal start to their game at the American Airlines Centre, leaving goaltender Anders Nilsson to fend off 52 shots on net plus another 35 attempts.
“We weren’t in that game. To be as close as we are at the end was misleading,” said head coach Todd McLellan. “I thought we were just putting time in ... We had some key people who weren’t engaged in the game then we had others who were overwhelmed.
“That’s the result we’re going to get when that happens.”
Nilsson was beaten by a sharp angle shot from Spezza at 17:48; Jamie Benn jammed in a wraparound at 2:42 of the second period; then late in the third, Antoine Roussel set up Spezza, who added an empty-net goal before game’s end.
The Oilers, who had one goal to show for their previous two games, finally got on the board at 10:55 of the middle frame when Oscar Klefbom’s shot from the blue line hit the Stars’ Vern Fiddler.
Less than two minutes later, McDavid was celebrating his first.
“Connor getting his goal was a nice reward. I know he’s been squeezing the stick tight. I’m sure that he’s felt some pressure to score,” said McLellan, clearly more distracted by all that had gone wrong. “I think we’re a better team than we showed tonight and the disappointing thing is that push I had talked about very early didn’t exist.”
McDavid’s puck, as is the custom, was retrieved and marked and will later be presented to the rookie in a keepsake form.
“There was a little bit of a seam there, I just tried to find some open ice, and was lucky enough to get a stick on it,” said McDavid, who said that at the end of the day, it was about the team, not about him “and obviously, this is a very disappointing road trip.”