Calgary Flames' MacKenzie Weegar chases Edmonton Oilers' Connor McDavid during second period NHL action in Edmonton on Oct. 13.JASON FRANSON/The Canadian Press
Since Amazon started pushing its new NHL series last month, screaming Connor McDavid has become inescapable.
You’re trying to watch a random back episode of Bosch on Prime and there’s McDavid, attempting to drive his tonsils through his front teeth using only the power of his lungs. You’d begun to worry we’d be seeing this hyper-in-touch-with-his-feelings McDavid all year long.
Good news on that front – bored, mumbly McDavid is back.
The Edmonton Oilers have lost three straight to begin the season. Each defeat has been a different flavour of embarrassment – a full-on blowout (6-0 to Winnipeg), overrun by an also-ran (5-2 to Chicago) and a third-period collapse (4-1 to Calgary).
This is where your inner Ron MacLean says, ‘This is not the start the Stanley Cup finalists were hoping for.’
Meanwhile in Toronto, the Leafs have already won the Stanley Cup. They won’t collect it until June, but numbers don’t lie. Three games, two wins, eight goals. Let the engraver know he can start carving names now.
The Oilers captain was cornered after Sunday night’s loss to Calgary. The press has started going Barbara Walters on him. It’s hoping he will shed a tear of frustration.
“Are you guys up to the emotional level, playing with the intensity you need to right now?”
“Probably not,” McDavid muttered. “We’re getting beat in a lot of battles. Getting beat in a lot of different ways.”
As he said it, McDavid stared at the ground and gently nodded his head side to side. He hasn’t had to use his clichés all summer and is having trouble recalling them.
McDavid doesn’t look worried and why would he be? Last year, his team didn’t start the season until it had been under way for a month. That turned out okay. Now he’s supposed to panic?
Maybe the Oilers have a plan, or maybe they’re just working to one nobody’s bothered saying out loud. But this is starting to look like the way an NHL season should be treated – no need to rush yourself.
Generally speaking, the sports where people hit each other as hard as they can don’t happen very often, and the sports in which people don’t do that play a lot of games. The NHL does both – as brain rattling as football, as frequent as basketball.
Basketball players have figured out that it doesn’t make sense to go 100 per cent 100 per cent of the time. And they’re not getting knocked into the third row every time they bring the ball up the court.
So why is it taking the NHL so long to get there?
There are scenarios under which a hockey team might feel constant urgency. If you think you won’t make the playoffs, or if nobody shows up at your games, or if you believe home-ice advantage matters, then it makes sense to go hard all year long.
Edmonton could start the head coach in net and it would make the postseason. People would show up to its games if it played with a hacky sack instead of a puck. And last year’s run to the final proved to the Oilers that home-ice advantage is overrated.
Why would the Oilers care about October? October is their preseason. If they haven’t figured it out by December, then maybe it’s time for McDavid to start screaming again. Until then, this is nothing but nightly mulligans.
Not every team can do this because a) they don’t all have the security blanket that is McDavid plus Leon Draisaitl, and b) of the weird way this Oilers generation has come together.
For a long time, the harder they tried, the worse it got. They trained their fans to believe they were born losers.
You see that sport specifically in other towns as well – New York basketball, Dallas football, Cleveland baseball. In the wrong city on the wrong streak, there is nothing more powerful than a collective lack of belief.
Those are the places in which eight months of play is broken into discrete three-game chunks. Win three, you’re on your way, baby. Lose three, and why haven’t they fired the coach yet?
Bad teams in bad markets dream of being abused by their customers – which may be why good teams in good markets can’t bring themselves to opt out of the cycle.
What would the Dallas or Carolina franchises give to exist in the same sort of hockey market as Montreal or Winnipeg? A lot, even though it would be a brake on performance.
As it is, Dallas can be invisible for long stretches. Its evaluation cycle is every 20 or 30 games.
Edmonton has two ways to break out of its loop – win all the time, or lose until people give up. The Oilers chose option two.
Last year, they weathered the city’s delirium, to the point where people felt foolish for doubting them. This year, they reap the benefit of that ground work.
Three bad losses in, does anybody think the Oilers aren’t close to the best team in the NHL? Will they change their minds if they lose three more like they lost the first three? How many games do they have to lose before people give up on them again? A bunch, probably. A ridiculous amount.
That is a super power – you’ve got the best player in the world (and maybe the second best), a hypnotized fan base that now believes it’s just a matter of time, and a history of making up a ton of ground in the final furlongs.
The Oilers exist in a strange, interim world in which nothing they can do or say is wrong. It all looks like it’s part of the plan.
As long as you have a McDavid – a guy who doesn’t react until its time to massively overreact – people will think you know what you’re doing. Even if you have no clue.