Wednesday\u2019s 6-4 loss<\/a> to the Anaheim Ducks and eased any concerns about his status moving forward when he stepped in front of the cameras afterward.<\/p>\n\u201cYeah, I just rolled up on it a little bit,\u201d said McDavid. \u201cIt\u2019s fine.\u201d<\/p>\n
The fact he spoke to reporters at all was an encouraging sign, given that he might otherwise have been seeking additional medical treatment. McDavid walked through the dressing room in bare feet and looked no worse for wear.<\/p>\n
With the health concerns eased, the bigger question became obvious: When will the game\u2019s best player make his presence known in this first-round series?<\/p>\n
Keeping McDavid off the scoresheet in consecutive playoff games is no small feat. It didn\u2019t happen at all during last year\u2019s run to the Stanley Cup Final. You need to go back to Games 6 and 7 of the 2024 Final against the Florida Panthers to find the most recent instance.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think he\u2019s putting a lot of pressure on himself,\u201d said Oilers head coach Kris Knoblauch. \u201cObviously he wants the team to do well. He\u2019s our leader and when we have success he\u2019s a big part of that. There\u2019s stretches during the season that he hasn\u2019t been the best player, there\u2019s some nights he hasn\u2019t been outstanding, (but) it doesn\u2019t happen very often and certainly he\u2019s going to find his game.\u201d<\/p>\n
The most obvious place for him to look for it is on the man advantage. The Oilers vaunted power play has yet to strike in this series, going 0-for-6. McDavid generated three of his four shots in Game 2 on the power play.<\/p>\n
However, he was also guilty of a terrible turnover that became a back-breaking short-handed goal against \u2014 haphazardly throwing the puck to an unoccupied space in his own zone before Alex Killorn skated onto it and fed a shot pass to Ryan Poehling to make it 4-2.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust a little bit of a miscommunication,\u201d said McDavid.<\/p>\n
He spoke barely above a whisper in a quiet dressing room, but sounded more defiant than defeated.<\/p>\n
McDavid found encouragement from the adjustments Edmonton made to their zone entries between Games 1 and 2. They were certainly cleaner in that area. And he noted that the top unit was still working its way back into form after missing Leon Draisaitl and Zach Hyman to injury absences down the stretch.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs good as the power play is, it\u2019s still a work in progress,\u201d said McDavid. \u201cWe haven\u2019t run our normal routes and had our normal routes for some time. It\u2019s not just a light switch, so we\u2019re working at it obviously and we\u2019ll be a part of this series.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will be.\u201d<\/p>\n
So far Ducks head coach Joel Quenneville has opted against chasing a hard matchup against McDavid at 5-on-5. Incredibly, unheralded center Tim Washe was the Anaheim forward who lined up across from him most during the first two games of the series and the total shots during those 11 minutes ended up at just 3-2 in Edmonton\u2019s favor.<\/p>\n
Neither team scored.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think you\u2019ve just got to know when you\u2019re on the ice you can face him,\u201d said Quenneville. \u201cAnybody in our lineup in the middle of the game, hey, don\u2019t be surprised when he\u2019s out there and trust that we\u2019re going to be able to get it done. It\u2019s basically everybody on the ice\u2019s responsibility.\u201d<\/p>\n
Heading home with the series tied 1-1, the Ducks should take major pride in the job they\u2019ve done against McDavid.<\/p>\n
Of course, it\u2019s not something that can be celebrated just yet. The NHL\u2019s six-time scoring champion just feels too inevitable for any opponent to ever get comfortable. And despite forcing some plays in an uncharacteristic manner in the early stages of this series, McDavid hardly seemed rattled by the 0-0-0 stat line beside his name.<\/p>\n
\u201cI still thought we got looks,\u201d said McDavid. \u201cI still thought we had chances. Obviously, we\u2019ve got to find a way to score. Yeah, it\u2019ll come.\u201d<\/p>\n
History says it\u2019ll happen Friday night when Game 3 of this series goes at Honda Center: McDavid has never gone three straight playoff games without registering a point and he\u2019s now into his eighth playoff season.<\/p>\n
\u201cAny time I see Connor do something maybe not at his best, usually it doesn\u2019t last very long,\u201d said Knoblauch. \u201cHe usually finds a way to correct it. He usually turns it around.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EDMONTON \u2014 Breathe easy, Oil Country. Connor McDavid may not yet look anything like his usual world-beating self…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":283664,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164,2070],"class_list":{"0":"post-283663","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-anaheim","8":"tag-anaheim","9":"tag-anaheim-headlines","10":"tag-anaheim-news","11":"tag-edmonton-oilers"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283663"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283663\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}