Edmonton Oilers' Connor McDavid celebrates his 1000th point, against the Nashville Predators in Edmonton on Nov. 14.JASON FRANSON/The Canadian Press
Early in the summer of 2015 I met Connor McDavid for the first time.
He was a baby-faced 18-year-old who had yet to graduate from high school and was the most highly touted NHL prospect since Sidney Crosby.
Earlier that night I introduced myself to Connor’s dad, Brian, and mom, Kelly. Brian was polite but cautious. He had coached Connor and understood the enormous pressure his son was about to face as the No. 1 draft pick.
Kelly was chatty and friendly. She was taken aback that Canada’s national newspaper would assign one journalist to write about him all year. She gasped, “Oh my God, please be nice!”
I still keep in touch with Canada’s most famous hockey mom.
That is nearly 10 years ago and 1,001 career points ago in an astonishing career for McDavid, whose Oilers play in Toronto on Saturday night.
Athletic greatness is not linear, but watching its beginnings unfold in real time, with its peaks and detours, was extraordinary.
Some memories have stuck with me more than others. Here are some from then and a few since.
The summer of 2015
In June, a day or two before the NHL draft, McDavid was invited with a handful of other top prospects to take batting practice before a Miami Marlins baseball game. Batting left-handed he sprayed a few soft line drives and blooped a couple of singles into left field.
As expected, on June 26, Edmonton used the first selection in the NHL draft to pick him. He was so nervous that moments before he told his parents, “I think I am about to throw up.” Jack Eichel, to whom McDavid will always be linked, was the next player chosen. Dylan Strome was third and Mitch Marner fourth.
In July I went to watch McDavid during a training session with fitness guru Gary Roberts. It was a long, gruelling morning. His workout partner that day was Steven Stamkos. McDavid was extremely self-conscious about the attention he was receiving and didn’t want a future hall-of-famer to think he was cocky. “I haven’t accomplished anything in the NHL,” he told me. “I don’t even know if I will make the team.”
McDavid weighed 187 pounds and it was Roberts’s goal to get him closer to 200 before the season started. His workouts were so strenuous that at the time he was taking in 5,500 calories a day.
That same afternoon I went to the McDavids’ former home in Newmarket, a suburb to the north of Toronto. Kelly welcomed me and took me into the basement where Connor and his older brother Cameron played mini-sticks. The basement had since been redone and had been turned into a museum of Connor’s early achievements. When he was tiny, McDavid would coax his mom to play goalie. She stopped when he was about six and he was whipping rubber pucks at her.
While Brian McDavid taught Connor fundamental skills, Kelly nurtured his heart. At 18, with an NHL career ahead of him, she was rightfully proud but still very much his mom.
“To me, he is still the same normal kid with a messy room he always has been,” she told me.
On a Tuesday in September, McDavid and 38 other rookies gathered at the old Maple Leaf Gardens for a daylong hockey-card photo shoot co-ordinated by Upper Deck and the NHL Players’ Association.
I watched as McDavid charged across the ice, flipped a puck toward a net that wasn’t there, scored an imaginary goal and pumped his fist. A photographer captured the moment he has long daydreamed about.
“We have been planning on this since Connor was 14,” said Chris Carlin, senior marketing manager for California-based Upper Deck, the NHL’s licenced trading-card partner. “This type of player comes around very seldom.”
There was speculation his rookie card would be worth $250 to $300 out of the pack. A little less than three years later, one of his rookie cards sold for US$55,655 in an online auction.
The first of many
In October, the Oilers opened things with a tough three-game trip. It would be hard to find better defensive teams than the St. Louis Blues, Nashville Predators and Dallas Stars. It was in Game 3 that he registered his first point and first goal on a tip-in. Since then he has added 340 goals and 1,000 more points during the regular season.
The injury
In early November McDavid’s season crashed to a halt when he suffered a broken clavicle. It was heartbreaking to see, and for me worrisome. What would now become of my assignment? The Globe and Mail decided to press on. It suspected better things would come. McDavid missed 35 games and three months of the season. He returned with a goal for the highlights and two assists in a 5-1 win over Columbus.
Year 2
With McDavid appointed captain as a 19-year-old, the Oilers reached the playoffs for the first time in a decade.
The Stanley Cup Final
As McDavid got better and better so did the Oilers. They reached the Western Conference final in 2022, the semi-finals in 2023 and came one goal short of winning the Stanley Cup last summer. McDavid had eight goals and 42 points in 24 playoff games, and led the playoffs in scoring by a mile. His points total was higher than any other player except Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux.
Now
He has piled up too many accolades to list. His latest milestone occurred on Thursday when he had a goal and an assist in a win over Nashville. The goal was a one-timer, point No. 1,000; a brilliant, no-look pass for an assist in overtime was 1,001.
He reached 1,000 points in 98 fewer games than Crosby and 211 fewer than Alex Ovechkin.
When he reached 1,000 he was mobbed by teammates. “I love you guys,” he told them.
“We love you too,” they told him back.
He is now considered the world’s greatest hockey player. It has been a treat to watch.
Marty Klinkenberg is the author of The McDavid Effect: Connor McDavid and the New Hope for Hockey.