Center’s highlight-reel pass to Draisaitl comes against Panthers on ‘greatest stage’
© Steph Chambers/Getty Images
SUNRISE, Fla. — Jeff Jackson has watched Connor McDavid make spectacular plays for years. He used to be his agent. Now he is the president of the Edmonton Oilers. Still, he was amazed by one of McDavid’s three assists in Game 2 of the Stanley Cup Final.
“I jumped up and was like, ‘What’d he just do?’” Jackson said.
The play became a footnote because it happened in the first period of a 5-4 double-overtime win for the Florida Panthers at Rogers Place in Edmonton on Friday. The series is tied 1-1 entering Game 3 at Amerant Bank Arena here Monday (8 p.m. ET; MAX, truTV, TNT, SN, TVAS, CBC).
But it’s worth watching again, because it was eye-popping even by McDavid’s ridiculous standard. It illustrates what sets apart the Oilers captain and No. 1 center, who leads the Stanley Cup Playoffs with 31 points (six goals, 25 assists) in 18 games.
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“I don’t know if there’s a harder play in hockey than to do what he just did,” teammate Mattias Ekholm said.
In real time, it’s a blur. Tie game. Power play. McDavid makes one guy miss, toe drags past another guy and passes from left to right to forward Leon Draisaitl, who one-times the puck into the net, giving the Oilers a 3-2 lead at 12:37.
Jack Michaels, their play-by-play broadcaster, said his mouth cannot keep up with McDavid’s speed.
“I’ve learned over the years, less is more,” Michaels said. “If you try to cram some sort of superlative word that you think might be appropriate, you’re still not doing the moment justice, so better to get the particulars and then recreate — or attempt to recreate.”
Let’s attempt to recreate this play in slow motion.
McDavid takes a pass from Draisaitl on top of the left circle. The puck is rolling as he head-fakes center Aleksander Barkov, who was voted the winner of the Selke Trophy as the NHL’s best defensive forward this season for the third time.
As Barkov goes one way, McDavid goes the other and cuts behind him into the left circle. Barkov is spinning around, and the puck is still rolling. Aaron Ekblad, a 6-foot-4 veteran defenseman, reaches out with his long stick, and McDavid reaches into his bag of tricks.
“He doesn’t use a curl-and-drag move very often, because that really doesn’t work in this league, right?” Jackson said.
McDavid drags the puck around Ekblad’s stick, gets the puck to sit flat on the ice and slips to the right between Ekblad and Barkov to the left hash marks.
“Sometimes when he’s crossing up and squaring you up, and the puck’s bobbling and stuff, that’s when players think they have a chance to strike,” Oilers forward Connor Brown said. “That’s kind of when he looks to expose guys.”
McDavid threads the puck between Panthers center Anton Lundell and defenseman Gustav Forsling onto Draisaitl’s stick blade low in the right circle. Draisaitl bangs it into an open net as goalie Sergei Bobrovsky lunges across, sticks out his glove in vain and falls onto his stomach.
Jackson often says McDavid has a better GPS system than anyone else.
“The pass is, like, through the other guy but right on the tape in the exact spot where Leon can one-time it,” Jackson said. “It’s his ability to assess at the end of the day, because it’s all one motion. He’s pulling it, he’s seeing what’s going on with Leon, he’s seeing the defender, where that defender’s stick is, and just from a timing perspective, it’s all got to be perfect.
“I don’t know how he does it. He just has a sensory thing, and it’s all timing.”
How did he do it?
After Edmonton practiced Sunday, McDavid was asked what he’d say to a kid wondering that after watching the play. He doesn’t like talking about himself and didn’t say much, but maybe there is no answer.
“A lot goes into that,” McDavid said. “I don’t know.”
He laughed.
“Yeah, I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know how to answer that.”
Sitting to McDavid’s right on an interview podium, Draisaitl answered for him.
“You can’t learn that,” Draisaitl said, drawing laughs.
It’s easy to say the play was a product of elite talent honed by years of skill work. It’s easy to shrug it off as McDavid doing McDavid things.
But no one should take it for granted. McDavid is one of a kind and pulled off this play against top competition in the Cup Final.
“The one thing I’m guilty of, probably more so than anyone out there in the media, is perhaps underselling, because I’ve become accustomed to it,” Michaels said. “I think what magnifies the McDavid play is who he did it against and the context.
“It’s not just Barkov and Ekblad — it’s in a championship series being played at an otherworldly level.”
McDavid made the Cup Final look like junior hockey.
“I make jokes about it, but in Erie, he did it all the time,” said Brown, who also played with McDavid for Erie of the Ontario Hockey League from 2012-14. “I see it all the time in practice, I see it all the time in games, so it’s obviously awesome for the world to see it on the greatest stage.”
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