Looking out for No. 1s
McDavid, Matthews don’t decide game but draw a crowd
Wayne Gretzky flew in for the game. Oh, he probably scheduled some other meetings, saw some business partners, had other things to do as part of his still-coalescing job with the Edmonton Oilers. He works there again, finally.
But the greatest player in history came to see 19-yearolds Connor McDavid and Auston Matthews, he said. That was the point.
“All eyes will be on those two kids, no doubt about it,” said Gretzky before McDavid’s Oilers played Matthews and the Toronto Maple Leafs. “I’ll be watching. That’s why I flew in. I’m excited to see the game. I think it’s great for our sport.”
But hockey is neither basketball, nor a gunfight. Neither kid dented the scoresheet, and at the end, it was McDavid who was left chasing a semi-forgotten lottery pick, Nazem Kadri, who had hounded him all night, and who pulled at McDavid’s arm as he swam by before potting the overtime winner in a 3-2 game. McDavid complained; his coach, Todd McLellan, called it a textbook example of holding. You can’t be the hero every night.
“I have an opinion on it,” McDavid said. “I don’t really want to share it. The ref saw what he saw. Kadri made a good play.”
It was supposed to be the McDavid-Matthews bowl, but life and opponents and goalies got in the way. The first time McDavid took a puck and accelerated up the left side, it took four Maple Leafs on that side of the ice before he was separated from the puck. You could see his quality — the way a sharp pass would just stick to McDavid’s stick and he wouldn’t break stride, the way he could turn at speed and not slow down, the way he would throw the puck past a defender and then go get it. He will make a lot of people guffaw in disbelief during his career, McDavid will.
The Leafs, meanwhile, weren’t interested in laughing. Early on Kadri shoved McDavid up and down the ice before finishing with a last push, and McDavid chuckled as linemate Milan Lucic steamed over to glower at someone, and maybe wrestle. “I don’t know any skill player who likes to get hit,” Kadri said.
Leafs defenceman Morgan Rielly said his advice on dealing with McDavid is not to back up too much, but not to get too close: He compares it to a cornerback dealing with a wide receiver who is faster than he is, guarding against both the short pass and the long bomb.
Matthews, meanwhile, had a couple dangerous chances in the second and more in the third, mostly working with the sweet-passing William Nylander. Ray Ferraro of TSN thinks Matthews may be a little zapped after the world championship, the draft, a short summer, a World Cup, and the NHL. Leafs coach Mike Babcock thought McDavid’s eight first-period minutes might have tired him out. Maybe.
The two young stars didn’t decide it, though, because this is hockey. They tried to play the matchup down, and McDavid, asked if he considered Matthews a rival, said no, and added, “I mean, other than us being first overall picks in back-to-back years, that’s really the only thing in common we have.”
McDavid may indeed be peerless — as Matthews put it, “Nobody’s really ever seen a player that can skate the way he can” — and will be the best player in hockey, if he isn’t already. The question is whether Matthews can join the conversation, too.
They do have something in common, though. Rielly played with McDavid at the world championship and with both McDavid and Matthews on the North American team at the World Cup.
He says that when he talks with Matthews, one of the things that surfaces is the idea that he wants to be the best. Is it the same when he talks to McDavid?
“Oh yeah, for sure,” Rielly said. “They go hand in hand. I mean, they have their own personalities, they’re different people, but when you talk to them you definitely get the same vibe from them when it comes to what they want to accomplish. But when you go out to dinner with them, they’re two totally different personalities. One’s from Scottsdale and one’s from Toronto, so they have different interests, different backgrounds, different families. I mean, they really got along with
“They have the same motivation but they’re so different. I’m looking forward to the next couple years.” MORGAN RIELLY
each other, and it’s cool to be a part of. It’s cool to watch and hang out and watch what they talk about.
“It’s cool the way they have the same motivation but they’re so different. I’m looking forward to the next couple years, watching them go at it.”
As for the idea that elite players don’t look at a head-to-head matchup as anything more than a team game, well . . . Gretzky put the lie to that. He said, great players have pride, and that pride shows up when a rival is on the ice. It happened with him; it happens with all of ’em.
“The game gets better,” Gretzky said, “and these kids are about as good as I’ve ever seen, there’s no question about that.”
If it is a rivalry, it will largely have to be conducted by proxy. But on this night it was a rink in November where other players decided it, instead of two kids who are the future of something, whatever it is.