Hello, I’m Zach Laing and I’m the newest writer to come aboard the Beer League Heroes and I am here to tell you to get damn excited about Connor McDavid.
First off, Connor McDavid is better than sliced bread. Seriously. This kid is absolutely phenomenal and put on a show for Oilers fans in the Billy Moores Cup. Mind you, it was against a fairly good group of young prospects. Keyword is young.
His five goals were all worthy of the highlite reel, like many others he has scored in his career. His talent is off the charts. He sees the game at a different speed and it seems like he is playing a video game on easy mode. None the less, it’s hard not to get excited about the kid donning the Copper and Blue.
Chiarelli has said it himself. The expectations on McDavid need to be tempered. We can’t expect him to come into the league and score 100 points, or can we? As an 18-year old Sidney Crosby scored 39 goals and 63 assists for 102 points almost single handedly. To be honest with you, I would be happy if McDavid scored 50, or 60 points this year and anything more than that would be icing on the cake.
But again who knows, maybe by the time the season rolls around he could be ready to take off the training wheels sooner rather than later and step into a bigger role. McDavid is a special player who has stepped into larger roles than asked of him before. It will be fun to watch him blow around NHL defenders.
Robin Brownlee had a fantastic article last week where he spoke about how McDavid is more than just a phenom on the ice.
McDavid signed a hat, then motioned to a young fan behind the glass, his intended target, before tossing it over. When a loutish older fan who should know better reached in to snatch the lid, McDavid torched her with a world-class stink eye Mark Messier would be proud of and pointed at the child again. Message and hat delivered. – Brownlee
McDavid was adamant in saying after the game that he is going to be getting right back into the gym, and will be “going to try to get as big and strong as possible, then I’ll come back for training camp and do it all over again.”
The excitement doesn’t just stop there. For the first time in a long time, the Oilers actually are going into camp with some sort of competition at the NHL level. As I noted in an article I did recently for the Copper n’ Blue, the Oilers have nine defencemen going into next season that could potentially play at the NHL level.
Throw in the trade for Cam Talbot as well as the trade & signing of Anders Nilsson, the Oilers suddenly have some sort of depth in the net where Ben Scrivens could easily lose his job come fall. The forwards Chiarelli have brought in aren’t going to be superstars, but we don’t need them to be. Letestu and Korpral Korpikoski can be effective bottom-six players for the Oilers in the near future and good complimentary pieces to the top-six the Oilers are currently rolling with.
As the summer drags on, I feel like a giddy schoolgirl. I can’t wait to watch and see what this team does next season.
