BUFFALO, N.Y. – Connor McDavid, bless his soul, can look at a game like this one and imagine an alternate ending.
Among the wreckage of a blown lead and 4-3 overtime loss for the Edmonton Oilers here on Tuesday was a small moment that offered a window into the mind of the NHL’s leading scorer.
It came after the Buffalo Sabres pulled goalie Anders Nilsson for an extra attacker and tied the score with 29 seconds to play. It came after Oilers teammate Adam Larsson took a foolish hooking penalty 11 seconds beyond that.
McDavid, out for the late penalty kill duty, grabbed the puck in the neutral zone as the clock ticked towards zero and absolutely went for it. The vast majority of players would have iced it in that situation and settled for overtime, but there’s no hint of settling to be found anywhere in No. 97’s game.
“When I first got the puck, I thought there was no chance I could get there,” McDavid explained. “And then I looked up and saw three or four seconds and thought I might as well take a chance. I got there just a half-second too late.
“If there’s another second, maybe we’re talking about a different storyline of the game.”
For Oilers fans, that would obviously have been preferable to how it actually played out. Instead time expired on him and Sabres defenceman Rasmus Ristolainen capped a three-point night by scoring the power-play winner 57 seconds into the extra period.
However, as you walked out of KeyBank Center it was difficult not to have McDavid on the mind.
This had nothing to do with the forced storyline of a supposed rivalry game with Sabres centre Jack Eichel, the No. 2 pick in the 2015 draft behind McDavid. No, it was more about how the Oilers captain turned what would otherwise have been a mundane Tuesday night affair between two heavily taxed teams into something worth watching.
Heck, the Sabres felt good about how they defended the 19-year-old and McDavid still managed to scratch out two assists against them. He also had a breakaway and two other high-danger chances stopped by Nilsson from in-close.
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“Every rink we go to it’s Connor vs. somebody,” said Oilers coach Todd McLellan. “We sometimes struggle with that as a team. We’ve got to make sure that it’s an Edmonton vs. Buffalo situation. Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, a former first overall pick, Leon Draisaitl – these players have to not take a back seat. They have to step up and lead as well.
“Connor can’t do it by himself every night.”
After a sluggish start and an early 2-0 deficit for the Oilers, he had some help.
Drake Caggiula – playing in front of more than 60 friends and family, many of whom trekked across the border in a rented party bus – picked up two assists in his 10th NHL game.
Jordan Eberle poked home the puck on a goal-mouth scramble and had some other dangerous looks, and Draisaitl continued his recent hot offensive stretch by tipping in a McDavid pass that appeared destined to be the winner.
That left McDavid with 36 points – seven clear of Tampa’s Nikita Kucherov atop the league’s scoring list. Pretty heady stuff for a guy who has yet to play the equivalent of a full NHL season.
“I try not to look at it,” said McDavid. “I definitely don’t want to get caught up in it at all. It doesn’t really matter at the end of the day. The season is a marathon and there’s a ton of games to go.”
As much as anything, that point was hammered home on a night where there wasn’t a whole lot of atmosphere to speak of until the dying minutes.
Buffalo was playing its second game in as many nights – and its third in four days – while the Oilers continued their murderous stretch in this condensed schedule. They’ve now played 14 games in a 26-day period where they’ve bounced in and out of all three time zones.
“This is our grind time, if you will,” said McLellan. “We just don’t practice, which is sad.”
It offered a ready-made excuse following the sloppy finish, but the coach refused to take it.
“I know that Buffalo played in Washington last night and they were tired and they seemed to manage their way through it,” he said. “The schedule by no means affected the Oilers tonight, it should have favoured them.”
With back-to-back games in Philadelphia and Minnesota immediately ahead, McDavid tried to accentuate the positives.
“It’s nice to come back and put ourselves in position to get a point,” he said. “But still – we need to find ways to win games like this.”
