The Edmonton skyline has never seen cranes like this. Condo towers. Office buildings. A new rink going up.
It seems like every old three-story brick warehouse within 10 blocks of the new Rogers Place — which have combined to make this one of Canada’s least sexy downtown cores — has a sign on it now.
“For Sale.” “For Lease.”
The former asks, “Who’s going to rip this boring old thing down and put something exciting here?” The latter simply wonders if anyone wants to rent the place until the current owner tears it down themselves.
“Rip this old thing down and put something exciting here.”
That may as well have been the job description awaiting Bob Nicholson when he arrived here from Hockey Canada in June of 2014 to join an Oilers team that had missed the playoffs for eight years running (now nine). They were BM — Before McDavid.
A fan base had put down its emotional down payment on that condo in the sky when Taylor Hall was drafted in 2010, but by the spring of 2015 all they saw for their investment was a hole in the ground, and a bunch of ex-Oilers players — the Old Boys Club — muddling around with the blueprints.
The new downtown arena was rising out of the ground. The team? Not so much.
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Then National Hockey League’s deputy commissioner Bill Daly flipped that golden placard. Connor McDavid was coming to town. The hockey team had a crane of its own now.
“That certainly helped,” said Nicholson, accepting of the biggest bit of luck to land in an organization’s lap since the Pittsburgh Penguins won a 30-team lottery to draft Sidney Crosby coming out of the 2004-05 lockout.
Thursday in St. Louis, the Connor McDavid era begins. He is said to be that next “generational player,” and thus far there isn’t a hockey person this writer has met who would dispute that.
Except for, perhaps, McDavid himself.
“It’s something you dream of. (I am) really looking forward to Thursday,” he said of his first regular season game.
McDavid will admit to no expectations of greatness, only that he looks forward to the chance of playing at par with other NHLers. “You’re always trying to prove that, to be the best you can be.”
McDavid has played the whole “under-promise and over-deliver” card to perfection this fall in Edmonton. Fans of other teams can say what they want about this organization, but none can say McDavid is full of himself.
Hell, if you find yourself on the outer edges of his media scrum you can’t even hear what he’s saying.
“I’ve never been the loudest guy in the room, or the loudest guy on the ice,” he said. “I guess you (media) guys can tell that’s just how I am. Not the loudest guy.”
McDavid moved in with Hall for a few days before training camp began, but as late as Monday the two wouldn’t even admit to plans to move McDavid back in after camp. That would be presumptuous of making the final roster, something McDavid has been extra careful to not take for granted.
“I’m in the hotel for now,” he said, with a shrug. Hall said exactly the same words, when asked. Even shrugged the same way.
If he were your son, you would be proud of his ability to veil the level of confidence necessary to be a player of McDavid’s calibre. You’ve got to have an ego to be this good, but the truly great ones have always been able to shelve it when they step off the ice and into the public forum.
“He might not show it, but he has a lot of confidence in himself, and that’s a real good (attribute) for an 18-year-old,” said Hall, likely the one Oiler veteran who knows McDavid the best.
Hall was that guy once, the first of the cadre of No. 1 overall picks to arrive in Edmonton with giant, unrealistic expectations. He’s seen them come, one after the next — Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Nail Yakupov, now McDavid — and the ensuing futility has beaten the same mantra into Hall that has enveloped this entire organization.
“I’m not going to (predict) playoffs, or a Division win, or anything,” Hall said of the coming season. “We’re going to be a group where Edmonton Oilers fans can see we’re working as hard as we can, we’re getting the most out of every line. There won’t be any easy games this year (against) our team.”
As for McDavid, a wiser, five-years-older Hall sees a better chance for success than he had five seasons ago. “To be honest, the team that I played on my first year, we finished dead last. We’re not going to finish last this year — he’s going to have a better supporting cast. Hopefully he gets confidence from that.”
Hockey and confidence. With a $45 barrel of oil and an NHL team that plunged to laughing stock status over time, those two words are seldom used in the same sentence here in Northern Alberta anymore.
But Thursday we embark on a journey they have actually HAVE succeeded at once upon a time in Edmonton: A potentially great player, surrounded by core of others who look like they could be pretty good. It was back in 1978 and the principle was a kid named Wayne Gretzky.
If McDavid is as superior a player as seems possible, the Great Gretzky vacuum will come into play, making every teammate that much better.
“When you were with Wayne every day and saw how committed he was to be the best, to carving his name into history, the drive was incredible,” Mark Messier told me this summer. “It was a message for all of us: If you wanted to be the best, there was a price to be paid. And here was the best, payin’ that price. It was easy to follow Wayne.
“I expect him to transition pretty smoothly to pro,” Messier continued during a visit to Edmonton last week. “His off-ice demeanour his commitment, his work ethic…. All the things that make great players great, he obviously has.”
Messier knows there is more pressure on McDavid today than there was on Gretzky and the Oilers as they stumbled out of the World Hockey Association and into the NHL back in 1979. The expectations for immediate team improvement are imminently steeper.
“That’s what great, special players carry: Expectations,” he said. “Everyone can clearly see how great a player he’s been, and there’s no reason why he won’t be able to do the same things at the next level.
“Expectations, pressure (are) all the things that burden great players. They find a way to take it in stride. I don’t see Connor handling it any different way than Gretzky, (Mario) Lemieux, Crosby or any of the great players who came before him.”
It’s a good thing men like Messier are willing to include McDavid’s name in sentences next to some of the great players who have ever played the game, because the kid himself wouldn’t do it in a thousand years.
McDavid, we have learned during his first professional training camp, is the under-promise and over-deliver type. After what this franchise has been through for the past 20 years, his approach is identical to that of Nicholson, new GM Peter Chiarelli and new head coach Todd McLellan.
“I’m excited for the fans, but I want to temper it,” Nicholson, now the Oilers Chief Executive Officer, cautions. “This is a team that’s in the process of getting better, but we’ve got to keep expectations under control here.”
Like Charlie Brown in the old Peanuts cartoon, an entire Northern Alberta fan base is lining up behind that football again this fall, praying that it’s still going to be there when they go for the big kick. That it’s not a mirage — again — and they fall flat on their backs with a giant, “Ugh!”
Messier, who knows a thing or two about winning, says it’s time for change. He sees McDavid is the difference maker that will allow this franchise to get up off of its knees.
Finally.
“There’s a distinct different feeling,” he said. “There’s been a lot of change in the organization, with Connor coming in to compliment all the other players who are getting well established in the league. The new arena coming… Just a lot of great things happening.
“Now, we have to find a way to translate that to success on the ice. Because ultimately that’s all that matters. All the other stuff is great bells and whistles, but we need to find a way to help the team win.”
They may have found it. Tonight, we begin to find out.
