EDMONTON — Somehow, a two-to-three week injury turned into nine days on the shelf for master healer Connor McDavid, who returns from an ankle injury for a key Divisional meeting for the Oilers with the Vegas Golden Knights at Rogers Place on Wednesday night.
How did he recover so fast?
“That’s a good question,” said McDavid. “It’s pretty lucky. It was not very good initially, and things just turned the corner, you know, really, really quickly.”
McDavid was tripped along the right boards in Columbus last Monday, falling awkwardly on his left ankle on his first shift of the game. He flew with the team to their next game in Nashville, then took a private jet home to Edmonton to begin his rehab.
There was talk of a high ankle sprain, and McDavid feared the worst on that lonely flight home.
“I certainly did. Yeah, I felt not very good about it,” he said. “This is something that I’ve had a little bit before, and maybe it’s just a tweak of an old injury or something, I don’t know. But it feels good.”
McDavid will centre a line with Zach Hyman to his right and Jeff Skinner on his left tonight.
The Oilers are muddling along at 6-6-1 this season, with a power play that’s ranked 27th in the NHL at 14.7 per cent and a penalty kill that is dead last at 60 per cent. McDavid won’t help the latter, but he draws the most penalties on the team, and is obviously the straw that stirs the power play here in Edmonton.
“The power play, it’s an immediate boost with him out there,” said head coach Kris Knoblauch. “Your five-on-five game, the matchups for the opposition, obviously that creates some difficulty for them. When you have that speed and that talent, usually your NHL leading scorer in the lineup …
“The fact that we enter Connor into the lineup is, what it does is endless.”
The most uncharacteristic element of a sluggish start to the season has been the ineffective power play. The Oilers’ top unit has consistently been one of the best in the business, but early this season they rank 30th in power plays per game (2.62), 29th with just five power-play goals, and 31st with just 39 shots on goal.
“The power play just seems a little bit lifeless right now,” McDavid said. “But we know what we’re doing out there. We’ve been doing it for a long time. It’s time to get the excitement back in the group, the energy back on the power play and get it going. I mean, it’s time.”
The shot volume is concerning, though McDavid — who has three goals and seven assists in his 10 games played — sees the problem from a different angle.
“I think it’s the retrievals that have really been the issue,” McDavid said. “We’re getting our (initial) shots, but we’re just not getting anything back. Not generating the second, third, fourth chance on the power play that’s always been our staple.
“It’s never been the set play that’s made it successful. It’s retrievals, getting it back. Gully (power play coach Glen Gulutzan) talks a lot about road hockey. You know, scoring on second and third chances, when you’re off script.”
The Oilers got crushed 6-1 in that Columbus game where McDavid played just a single shift, but they won two of the next three games without him. Returning their captain, best player and heartbeat in time for games against Vegas and Vancouver may be the tonic for a team that’s slowly finding its game.
“There’s never a must-win game in October, November and December,” Knoblauch said. “We’re still out of the playoff picture right now. We know what the expectations are, to win hockey games, and we want to start rolling together consecutive wins.”
