For the great ones, it so often seems as though the rink can barely contain their brilliance.
Taken another way, the ice surface just seems too small some nights for a full expression of their talent. And so, on Monday night, Connor McDavid ran out of runway, crashing into the end boards in Edmonton along with two Philadelphia Flyers and at least temporarily taking the wind out of the sails of those long-suffering Alberta fans who believed he was, and is, the special one capable of finally taking this team out of the lower echelons of the National Hockey League.
Let’s not overstate the drama here; McDavid has suffered a fractured clavicle, likely not a career-threatening injury, but he will be out “months,” according to general manager Peter Chiarelli.
For the second November in a row he has seen a part of his teenage body break. Last year, it was his hand in a fight, and this. He will rehabilitate the injury and return, hopefully in the New Year.
But it was a fearsome crash, a collision between a hockey rink, which has no sidelines to reach for safety when space becomes compromised, and a speeding bullet of a young hockey player. Of all McDavid’s talents, it is his speed that takes your breath away, or at least the combination of the fact he can fly on skates and do things with the puck at the same time that others struggle to do at half the speed.
Few are assigning any blame here, particularly not to members of the Flyers. The great disappointment here lies not with the rules or the sport, but with the sense that McDavid had already demonstrated he could indeed be a player who could sort through the clutter in a league weighted towards the defender, not the creative attacker.
What we so often imagine and practice as a game of speed and cleverness has, at its highest level, become like a blender, all the participants churned together in a whirring container from which clarity is often invisible.
McDavid can step beyond all of this, which is why he is special. For every Canadian who makes it to the big time, there are a 10,000 of us who believe we could have as well had our parents built us a backyard rink, or if that coach hadn’t preferred another player, or if we had the money to afford the extra coaching and training.
But those tens of thousands of us stop at believing we could be the next Gretzky, the next Orr, the next McDavid. We who love the game understand there is a level that is beyond what hard work and a break here or there can deliver. We don’t see them as sporting gods, per se, but rather the ultimate expression of what is possible in a game that so often is impossibly difficult.
It goes beyond the hard luck suffered by McDavid here. The Oilers have endured many miserable seasons in recent years, but have been rewarded with a galaxy of special young talent. Unfortunately, Taylor Hall has been frequently injured, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins has suffered shoulder issues, and even now Jordan Eberle is on the sidelines.
Now this. Crap.
As McDavid begins his road back from injury, 18-year-old Auston Matthews, likely the first overall pick next year, has suffered a back problem while playing professional in Switzerland. Once more, even at a time when teenagers are more physically prepared than ever before in the history of the sport, the question will be asked how much risk is taken when they are given work in a sport where a player who was once 5-9, 170 pounds is now 6-3, 220 pounds.
McDavid is built more like Wayne Gretzky than Eric Lindros, and no matter how he works at his physique, that will always be the case.
So there’s no easy answer. Older players get hurt as well. On the night McDavid flew a little too close to the sun, veteran Boston forward Chris Kelly suffered a badly broken leg that will send him to the infirmary for up to six months.
It’s a dangerous game, and there’s nothing scarier than full speed collisions into the end boards that haven’t disappeared because they changed the icing rules. It’s the danger and the fear that help create the thrill of it all, and when a player like McDavid seems to defy natural law with what he can do with the puck on his stick while travelling with eye-catching velocity, it suspends that sense of danger, of fear.
The wonderful thing is we now know for certain he can be great. No one player makes the NHL, and the games will roll on. But, my goodness, this is so disappointing, not only because we’ve waited for so long to see this player, but because the nature of the NHL game right now has turned the 100-point season into a distant dream, and the 60-point player into a star.
McDavid had 12 points in his first 13 NHL games, more impressive when you consider he was pointless in three of his first four matches. He represented, and represents, the possibility of not only greatness, but a player who could put up jarring numbers, maybe do something like Rocket Richard’s 50 goals in 50 games some day, or make 150 points in a season seem reachable again.
Sure, we’re all told a 1-0 game can be entertaining, and sure that’s true. But the McDavids of the game express another level of entertainment and talent, and when they’re removed from the game while they recuperate from an injury, that’s gone. Very few players are seen as a loss to the league in general rather than just their team when they are injured, but McDavid is already that player.
He’ll be back. But he just got here, so it seems. It was already starting to be a heck of a ride. Now, we put it all on pause, which isn’t nearly as enjoyable as holding our breath as this kid heads up the ice.
