McDavid could be greatest ever

Opinion

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This article was published 28/04/2021 (1596 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

He’s having a season for the ages, single-handedly taking over games and putting up points at an incredible rate. And with each passing night, and every eye-popping performance, Connor McDavid keeps making the case that, when all is said and done, he might just end up being the best we’ve ever seen.

You’ll find little argument that the Mount Rushmore of pro hockey currently includes Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux, Gordie Howe and Bobby Orr. But it says here McDavid has the potential to surpass them all, with a unique toolbox of talent that puts him on an entirely different planet when it comes to his modern-day peers. And perhaps those of the past, as well.

The skating, particularly the explosiveness and the edge-work. The vision. The hands. The work ethic. Nobody’s perfect, but the man known to Edmonton Oilers fans as “McJesus” comes pretty darn close in terms of an on-ice product.

Following Wednesday night’s 3-1 victory over the Winnipeg Jets at Bell MTS Place in which McDavid set up all three goals, the 24-year-old from Richmond Hill, Ont. is lapping the field when it came to the NHL scoring race. His 84 points in 47 games, a 1.79 point-per-game average, is the highest in the league this century.

And no, all of those points haven’t come against Winnipeg, even if it feels that way. McDavid “only” had 22 (seven goals, 15 assists) in the nine head-to-head games this year, leading Edmonton to a 7-2-0 record. As far as I know, he doesn’t own any property around these parts. But it appears he’s living rent-free in the heads of the Jets, with multi-point games in every outing and a staggering 26.1 per cent of all his 2021 offence coming against Paul Maurice’s crew.

As captain Blake Wheeler said earlier this year, McDavid really is a “super freak.” You know exactly what he’s capable of, you know what you have to do to try and stop him, but it’s nearly impossible once the puck drops. Just look at Monday night’s 6-1 beatdown by the Oilers, in which McDavid scored three times, added an assist and somehow kept getting breakaways and odd-man rushes against a Winnipeg team that seemed powerless to do anything about it.

It reminded me of my days of coaching minor hockey when you’d occasionally have some kid whose parents probably slapped skates on him in the delivery room doing laps around everyone else, the puck never leaving his stick until he’d bury it in the net. Of course, it’s one thing to see a seven-year-old do that in Timbits. It’s another matter entirely when it’s happening in the best league in the world.

Not surprisingly, McDavid is running away with the Art Ross Trophy, awarded at the end of every season to the top offensive player. He has a 17-point cushion on the next highest producer, teammate Leon Draisaitl, and is 23-points ahead of Nathan MacKinnon, who is third.That would be a ridiculous enough gap if this were a full 82-game season. But it’s even more absurd considering we still have a couple weeks to go on a 56-game campaign.

Prior to this two-game series in Winnipeg, Edmonton was plus-88 in five-on-five scoring chances all season when McDavid was on the ice. But when he’s catching his breath on the bench, they were minus-183. That is almost unfathomable. Show me another athlete, in any current major sport, who is that much better than the next best players.

I’d argue we haven’t seen this kind of dominance since Tiger Woods was winning golf majors in his sleep in the early 2000s.

Putting McDavid’s numbers to those of different eras in hockey is a bit of a fool’s game, so I won’t hold the fact McDavid’s career-high in points (so far) is “just” 116. There’s just no comparison to the game we see today versus the one that was played in the ’80s and ’90s, when Gretzky was regularly toying with 200-plus points per year.

Today’s athletes are better conditioned than ever, no longer showing up to training camp with the idea of getting in shape, or smoking cigarettes between periods, or spending off-days in the pub. They are finely-tuned machines. The goaltending is also completely different. Today’s masked men are truly larger-than-life, wearing the biggest equipment we’ve ever seen, and the kind of shots that routinely used to light the lamp are now just routine saves.

And the coaching is more detailed than ever, with video breakdown of every player and every shift that helps formulate the types of game-planning and checking you never used to see. Which is why if we had the ability to go back in time, I dare say McDavid would have run wild over the majority of competition with even greater ease than he does now.

All of which makes it borderline criminal the Oilers have done next-to-nothing with him in their jersey for the past six seasons. They have but one playoff series victory so far, way back in McDavid’s sophomore season of 2016-17. They missed the playoffs entirely in three of his first five years, then were upset by underdog Chicago in the preliminary round in the bubble last year.

They have a golden chance to change that this year, and Edmonton is my team to beat when it comes to the all-Canadian division. Sorry, Toronto. You as well, Winnipeg and Montreal. Let’s see if they can find a way to finally come up big when the stakes are highest. You know McDavid will bring it. He always does. It’s up to the rest of the squad to do their part.

And wouldn’t you know it, but the Jets line up as the likely first-round opponent. Just like previous incarnations of the club couldn’t solve the “Great One” during those old Smythe Division battles, it appears a guy who could ultimately end up as the “Greatest One” has this team’s number, as well.

mike.mcintyre@freepress.mb.caTwitter: @mikemcintyrewpg