Connor McDavid is inevitable.
“He’s that good. You turn on the TV every night. If the Oilers played, you’re going to get a McDavid highlight, somehow and some way,” Winnipeg Jets coach Paul Maurice said.
The Edmonton Oilers‘ star treated the NHL’s 56-game regular season sprint like most of us treat vacation luggage: Cramming absolutely everything he could fit into a limited space. He had 105 points in 56 games, including 33 goals. That’s 21 points better than his teammate and frequent linemate Leon Draisaitl, last season’s most valuable player.
His 1.29 assists per game ranked as the 19th-best single-season mark in NHL history. His 1.88 points per game is the 22nd highest single-season average in league history (min. 50 games). For both stats, McDavid’s numbers were the best since Mario Lemieux‘s 92 points in 70 games back in 1995-96.
“Mario was crazy big. He had that reach. He could slow the game down. [McDavid] seems to be able to do it at 150 miles an hour,” Hockey Hall of Famer Mike Modano, who played against Lemieux, told ESPN.
Adjusted for era — although not adjusted for the uniqueness of this season’s intradivisional schedule — McDavid’s production translates to 159 points in a full season, the ninth-best offensive campaign in NHL history.
McDavid has produced incredible offensive seasons before. What’s different this time is the totality of his game. His defense, previously a liability, has improved markedly. His expected goals per 60 minutes average (2.29) was down a half goal season over season.
McDavid deciding to master the defensive side of the game is scarier than when the velociraptors learned how to open doors in “Jurassic Park,” or, for a more hockey-relevant comparison, when Sidney Crosby learned how to win a faceoff.
“He’s just unique. He’s different than all other players,” Maurice said of McDavid, citing both Wayne Gretzky and Jaromir Jagr as examples. “These numbers, for this NHL [era], are incredible. He’s in that group of players that I got to watch where they’re so much different than anybody else.”
How does one deter a unique talent through traditional means? How does one defend the undefendable?
That’s the task for the Winnipeg Jets in the opening round of the North Division playoffs, starting Wednesday night: stopping McDavid.
It is something they haven’t quite been able to do this season, at all.
Because of the Canadian border restrictions and other pandemic concerns, the NHL scrapped its conference format in favor of four realigned divisions, with the teams playing only against divisional foes. That included the all-Canadian North Division, which McDavid ran through like a knife piercing poutine.
He abused two teams more than the other four. The Vancouver Canucks‘ coronavirus-interrupted schedule landed them squarely in McDavid’s early-May push for 100 points, and he torched them for 14 points in the final five games. McDavid ended up scoring 22 points in 10 games against Vancouver and 22 in nine against Winnipeg, never recording fewer than two points in any game against the Jets. Edmonton ended up going 7-2-0 against its first-round opponent.
“It’s no secret that they’ve had some success against us. That we had a tough time. That’s in the past,” Jets captain Blake Wheeler said.
Did he learn anything about slowing McDavid down from those games?
“I’m certainly not going to tell you what adjustments we need to make,” Wheeler said, “but there are some areas where we can be better.”
McDavid had seven goals and nine assists at even strength. He had six assists on the power play. Stopping the Oilers with the man advantage, with McDavid and Draisaitl on the ice, isn’t feasible: At a 28.6% conversation rate over the past two seasons combined, it’s the best in the NHL. So the task becomes stopping McDavid at 5-on-5.
“He had 105 points. If I shut him down and he has zero in the game, I think that bodes well for our chances,” Jets winger Adam Lowry said with a hint of sarcasm. “I’d say the chances of him getting on the board are pretty high, the way he’s played this year.”
His coach agreed.
“You’re not stopping this guy completely. Even if you do it right, he’s still putting up points against you,” Maurice said. “He’s that level of talent. You just can’t help him. He’s going to do it on his own. You just can’t help him.”
OK, so rather than stopping, the task becomes slowing McDavid down at 5-on-5 — if that’s possible.
Lowry had some success in the differentials for shot attempts (plus-6) and shots on goal (plus-8) when matched up with McDavid during the regular season, though McDavid scored four goals at 5-on-5 with him out there.
“It starts with managing the puck,” Lowry said. “For me, it would be making a little safer play than a 50-50 play. You gotta take away his speed and take away his transition game. You gotta get into his hands and get into his feet and don’t allow him to open up his speed. He doesn’t need a lot of space for that.”
What’s the ideal type of defensive forward against McDavid?
“Someone that can skate as fast as him,” Lowry said with a chuckle. “There are different styles. You’re never going to have the perfect mold. It’s about using what you have and using your abilities. Everyone is going to go about it a little differently, but the end goal is the same: Try to keep him to the outside. Try to not let him get the speed he’s so accustomed to getting. We know he’s going to get his chances. It’s about limiting the numbers of chances, so it’s not two and three [chances] but one and done.”
Jets star center Mark Scheifele will see “an awful lot” of McDavid in this series, according to Maurice. It has been a mismatch for McDavid this season, as he earned 61% of the shot attempts and outscored the Jets 10-2 when Scheifele was on the ice.
“It’s a little different with the way Mark [Scheifele] plays. I’m a little more physical,” Lowry said. “I try to be up and on him. With [Scheifele], they’re going to try to have the puck a little more there and create some chances against Connor’s line. If you can get those transition chances, then you’re in a spot where you’re not trading chances with him.”
Scheifele called McDavid “the best player in our game right now.” He also labeled himself a McDavid fan. Well, at least until he’s tasked with stopping him.
“When we learned we were playing Edmonton, you started to think about those times when Connor got the best of me or I made a play on him. You think about ways to take advantage of him when he’s on the ice, or what to do on the defensive side. He’s going to make you pay if you give him time or if you’re not in the right spot,” the Jets center said.
The Jets have an impressive last line of defense in Connor Hellebuyck, last season’s Vezina Trophy winner as the NHL’s top goaltender. But he had an .877 save percentage and a 3.96 goals-against average against Edmonton this season, although he had a .943 save percentage and a 1.65 GAA last season in three meetings.
Rather than rely on Hellebuyck, it’s Maurice’s hope that the Jets learned a thing or two about team defensive play and grinding out offense during the run-up to the postseason.
“I think that our game had a substantial shift in style. It happened when we weren’t winning games, but I really believe that was the best thing for us. We didn’t score easily. We had to grind it. That is the underdog mentality. You want to give the other team as little as possible, but you’re still aggressive enough that you get yours,” he said.
Perhaps one way to handle McDavid is … to simply choose not to do so, and focus on the time when he’s on the bench. Without McDavid and Draisaitl on the ice, the Oilers scored just 36% of the goals at 5-on-5; with them together on the ice, they scored 66% of them. In other words, Edmonton is entirely stoppable when those two unstoppable players aren’t skating.
But Maurice cautions against that theory. Seven of their nine games against Edmonton this season were one-goal margins.
“Those were the finishers on a lot of those plays, right? Those were the guys that put them over the tipping point in those tight games,” Maurice said.
So the Jets have to do their best to stop McDavid.
“I mean, you’re not eliminating them from the series. Everyone’s had a plan for them going into each game,” Maurice said.
Sorry, slow McDavid — to the best of their abilities, and without sacrificing the things the Jets do well themselves.
“We need to play our game. You have to be cognizant when two of the best — if not the best — players in the league are on the ice at the same time,” Wheeler said. “But at the end of the day, we can’t play five guys in front of the net and not try to play hockey, you know what I mean?”
It would just be delaying the inevitable anyway.