Connor McDavid<\/a>, in a thrilling 6-5 win over Carolina on Thursday, this scribe was lucky enough\/dutybound to perform the task of trying to find a new angle for the \u201cHow great a player is Connor McDavid?\u201d storyline.<\/p>\nI could publish of book my columns on this topic (it wouldn\u2019t sell), and McDavid isn\u2019t even 30 years old yet.<\/p>\n
And, of course, his teammates get to relive the weekly task of standing in front of a group of reporters, each of us trying to find a new route into the most travelled destination in Edmonton hockey history. AG \u2014 after Gretzky \u2014 of course.<\/p>\n
\u201cConnor broke a Gretzky record: 31 points now in this first 10 games,\u201d a media member said, inside a question for Leon Draisaitl. \u201cThose are video-game numbers!\u201d<\/p>\n
Draisaitl had five points Thursday as well. But there he stood, being asked the \u201cHow awesome is Connor?\u201d question for about the 2,000th time in his career.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat do you want me to say? It’s just not real,\u201d Draisaitl said. \u201cHe’s maybe the greatest player to ever play, in my books. It\u2019s a pleasure to share the ice with him, a pleasure to learn from him every day. He deserves everything.\u201d<\/p>\n
With a five-point night, McDavid set an Oilers record for the most points through 10 games in a season with 31, surpassing Wayne Gretzky in 1984-85. And McDavid is one of just four players \u2014 alongside Gretzky, Mario Lemieux (three times) and Mike Bossy \u2014 to start a season with 30 points in the first 10 games.<\/p>\n
Lemieux holds the record with 37 points in the opening 10 games of the 1988-89 season, the year he finished with 199 points.<\/p>\n
As the Oilers ran their record to 8-1-1 with the shootout win, McDavid had two second assists, a primary assist, and two goals in the third period, including one on a fluky bounce off of Jesperi Kotkaniemi\u2019s skate to tie the game at 18:32. But for the second straight night the power play won Edmonton a game the even-strength play likely did not deserve to win, with back-to-back three-for-five nights against Minnesota and the Hurricanes.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt feels like they\u2019re out there the whole game because they\u2019re so talented,\u201d Carolina head coach Rod Brind\u2019Amour said of McDavid and Draisaitl. \u201cBut when you give them the ice, the power plays, that\u2019s death. They\u2019re two of the best players maybe ever to play when there\u2019s that much space. You can\u2019t do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s just obscene what McDavid is doing in his 29-year old season, ripping through the competition even more surgically than in years past.<\/p>\n
His work on the power play is Michelangelo, his even-strength game more Bo Jackson.<\/p>\n
He leads the NHL with a plus-18, has a shooting percentage of 32 per cent, and his 19 even-strength points would put him behind only Draisaitl in NHL scoring. On Thursday he became the second player in NHL history to record three five-point outings in his first 10 games of a season. (Lemieux did it in eight games in 1992-93 and 1988-89.)<\/p>\n
Incredibly, McDavid seems to have somehow gotten even better this season, with his 30th birthday due on Jan. 13.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou learn, right?\u201d Draisaitl reasoned. \u201cWhen he was 24, he was just as flashy, just as fast. But there are little details that maybe weren’t as great. Now, his game is as complete as it gets, and he hasn’t lost a step offensively. I mean, you really just run out of words.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo pun intended, but I\u2019ll leave it at that.\u201d<\/p>\n
We\u2019ve told the story 100 times about McDavid and an opposing defenceman\u2019s gap. D-men travel through the NHL, night after night, and find their gauge on what kind of gap they need to properly defend a rush by an NHL forward.<\/p>\n
Then they arrive in Edmonton, and the math\u2019s all wrong.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s the tenet of hockey, that space is the currency for creativity. Just like Gretzky\u2019s buttonhook inside the blue-line created the necessary space for his wizardry back in the 80s, tighter defending and better skaters have forced McDavid to find his space in a far faster game with much less room.<\/p>\n
The spin move he made on Sean Walker, who challenged him aggressively on the penalty kill, left the Hurricane facing the other direction and gave McDavid the time he needed to put a puck on Ryan Nugent-Hopkins\u2019 tape for a powerplay goal.<\/p>\n
For every great McDavid play, there is a precursor \u2014 a side step, a cross-over, that patented spin move \u2014 that buys the time and space to make the play that ends up in the net. It\u2019s his cheat code: make a crazy athletic move to create the time for the unbelievably heady play that makes a goal.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just like any other player,\u201d said Carolina\u2019s Juuso Valimaki. \u201cYou get the feeling, you get hot and you feel like you can do anything out there. Obviously they\u2019re special players.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sorry, Jusso. You\u2019re only partly right.<\/p>\n
McDavid feels like he can do anything out there right now.<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s not \u201djust like any other player.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EDMONTON \u2014 \u00a0It\u2019s the curse that rides shotgun next to the absolute blessing of watching the sport\u2019s finest…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":943170,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-943169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/943169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=943169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/943169\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/943170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=943169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=943169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=943169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}