McDAVID PUTS ON A SCORING CLINIC
Oilers captain scores four goals and adds assist in impressive win over Lightning
On Game 178 of his NHL career, Connor McDavid had the game of his career.
And it wasn’t just registering his first four-goal outing and second five-point night that made it unique.
He played like a player possessed.
Score it as the night McDavid made his move to return to being king of the NHL.
Excited to be playing against the No. 1 team in the NHL standings, last year’s Hart Trophy, Art Ross Trophy and Ted Lindsay Award winner was at his showstopping, move-making, rocketpowered-skating, best-in-theworld form.
More than the creative genius we watch most nights, McDavid took eight shots, drew a penalty and was all over the ice looking every bit the player who established himself as the best on the planet last season, evidenced by his collection of hardware at the end of the campaign.
The young man who played through two bouts of the flu in the first half of the season was nothing short of brilliant as he moved from 12th to tied for third in NHL scoring as he led the Oilers to a 6-2 victory over the high-flying Tampa Bay Lightning visitors.
Attention Nikita Kucherov. Hello Steven Stamkos. Skating on the same ice as league-leading scorer Kucherov (66 points) and Stamkos (60 points), the just-turned-21 Oilers captain moved from 56 points to 61 to pass Stamkos.
Stamkos and Kucherov did not make it on the scoresheet.
This was the McDavid who produced a point in each of his final 14 games of the regular season last year.
And these were the Oilers we expected to watch this season and, indeed, did in the opener against Calgary when McDavid scored three.
Scoring two, including a memory-making mid-air conversion of his own rebound, to open the month against Colorado, McDavid had his third goal of the month in the first period.
It was a significant goal for several reasons.
A) The Oilers scored first.
B) It was only the 11th time in 51 games that the Oilers have managed to lead after the first period, as was the case after McDavid and Ryan Strome combined to set up Leon Draisaitl for a goal late in the initial 20 minutes.
C) Both first-period goals came on the power play. The Oilers went into the game dead last in the league on the power play. (The team with the league’s worst penalty kill was even successful early before giving up a goal early in the third period.)
McDavid’s goal in the second period was another memory maker.
No. 97 broke down the left side, put a major move on the defenceman and cut to the net where he had virtually no room left to do anything. Somehow he managed to flip it top shelf off the crossbar behind an astounded Andrei Vasilevskiy in the Tampa Bay net.
In the third period, he scored on a breakaway from his own blueline, and then got a goofy one from behind the Tampa net that went in off a skate as he tried to put it on the stick of Draisaitl out front.
It was the first four-goal game by an Oilers player since Sam Gagner in 2012.
Scoring six goals in two games, McDavid opened the month of February with his 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th, 20th and 21st goals of the season.
Last year in his 100-point Art Ross Trophy season, McDavid scored his 30th goal in his 80th game.
The five points more than made up for the fact that, going into the game, the only team McDavid had yet to produce a point against was Tampa Bay.
During the most disappointing season in Oilers history to this point, McDavid made it a night to remember forever.
“It was special,” he told the crowd in a brief on-ice interview after the game.
The quote of the night went to Draisaitl:
“It seems like he’s from another planet. It’s almost like it’s not fair.”