Connor McDavid is the best NHL player in our current era, if not the best hockey player in the world. The 26-year-old Richmond Hill, Ontario native could be the second saving grace for the Edmonton Oilers since Wayne Gretzky. Since McDavid’s explosion into the league, there have been many attempts at figuring out what makes him this spectacular. This article will attempt to look further than that and try to understand Connor McDavid’s psychology, early life, and how that influenced who he is today.
The Beginning
Connor McDavid was only three years old when he skated on the flooded ice in his backyard. Only half the height of a hockey stick, Connor spent hours on rollerblades in his basement, shooting pucks at nets at both ends. He scrimmaged with his older brother, Cameron, who he would tire out until his mother Kelly stepped in to be goalie, followed by Connor’s grandmother, and his father Brian. Eventually Connor’s shots grew harder and higher and Brian had to put on gear to protect himself. McDavid’s parents first registered him for organized hockey at the age of four. He was too young to play but his parents claimed he was a year older so he could. At five, Connor would attend his older brother’s games and listen intently to the pre-game speeches in the locker room. The league in his town refused to let him play a level above his age group, so Connor signed with a neighboring town’s league where he played against nine year olds. By the time he was eight, Connor’s skills were improving as he practiced in an obstacle course set up in his driveway. He would practice for so many hours that the neighbors were afraid for his health.
Connor McDavid, age nine, holding up the trophy for winning the Ontario Minor Hockey Association minor championship, in 2006.
Connor McDavid was always a single-minded person. An infamous example of this is when he was ten years old, his father took him out of the locker room to pose for a photo with Mario Lemieux during a peewee tournament in Quebec. Afterwards, Connor complained, saying that the photo interrupted his pre-game routine. In his hours of rollerblading in the driveway, Connor set up challenges for himself and developed extraordinary stick handling, which can be seen today. He controlled pucks around paint cants, attached sticks to the paint cans to pretend they were players to move around, and taped the cans to a skateboard to teach him how to toe drag and dangle around moving objects, all while timing himself to track his improvement. This creativity and dedication is what set up Connor’s impressive play ability today.
By the time Connor was thirteen, scouts were regularly showing up to his games. NHL agents predicted that he would be one of the league’s biggest stars, along the lines of Sidney Crosby. Bobby Orr saw Connor play when he was a teenager at a hockey camp in Toronto, which Connor was not invited to but joined his brother Cameron on the ice. “I arrived late and noticed a little guy out there and said ‘Who is that?’ It turned out Connor was the one I was watching. My first thought was, “Wow, does that kid have great hands,” Orr said. “Looking back, I think I was a pretty good judge of talent.” Following that, Orr visited the McDavids at their home in Ontario. After meeting with him, the family agreed to allow his sports agency group, the Orr Hockey Group, to represent the young Connor.
Connor McDavid at the OHL draft.
At fifteen years old, Connor was granted exceptional status by Hockey Canada which allowed him to join the OHL one year earlier than the official entry age. At the time, he was the third player ever granted permission to enter the league early, after John Tavares and Aaron Ekblad. McDavid was selected by the Erie Otters as the first overall pick in the 2012 Priority Selection Draft. For the next three years, McDavid would play in Western Pennsylvania with the Otters. During his three years with the team, Connor billeted with Bob and Stephanie Catalde, alongside their daughers, Caisee and Camryn, and young son Nico. Connor became a member of the family, an older brother to the girls and mentor to Nico, who was seven. Connor would play knee hockey with Nico in the living room, skate with him and his teammates at practice, and even sit on the bench with them during games. Connor even attended Nico’s game with his face swollen the day after his wisdom teeth were removed.
McDavid’s first season with the Otters was notable. He put up a fifteen-game scoring streak that began in just his second game with the team. He won OHL Rookie of the Month during October and November and finished the season with twenty-five goals and forty-one assists. Leading to him earning the title of the league’s top rookie. During the season, Wayne Gretzky called and told Connor he was rooting for him. Lemieux invited him to watch a Penguins game with him in his suite in Pittsburgh. The hockey world was recognizing Connor’s talent.
15 year-old Connor McDavid in his Otters jersey.
Connor became somewhat of a celebrity in Erie, Pennsylvania. He couldn’t go to a restaurant without getting mobbed. When he came home from games, the dining room table was piled with photographs for him to sign. When his teammates would get on the bus following games, McDavid would walk through the crowd of people and sign autographs, the team even hired a retired police officer to protect Connor as a bodyguard. When Connor was seventeen, he was offered to take a side route to get to the bus but he replied, “I was a little kid once too,” and went out in the cold to sign autographs for forty-five minutes. “He’s an unselfish person on and off the ice,” Bob Catalde said about Connor.
In Connor’s final year with the Erie Otters, McDavid accumulated forty-nine points in twenty playoff games. In one game, Connor scored five goals against the London Knights. He was almost unstoppable, just as he is today. “He does remarkable things, but never acts like he’s different or better than anybody else. He’s almost embarrassed when he pulls something off,” the Otters coach Chris Knoblauch said about McDavid. Connor’s dedicated attitude didn’t only apply to hockey. In his final year of high school, on top of a heavy hockey schedule, Connor held down a straight A GPA. Connor’s success with the Otters placed him not only as the top player in the OHL, but also as the top player in the Canadian Hockey League. He also won the CHL’s Student of the Year award twice in a row. By the time Connor finished junior hockey, he amassed 97 goals and 285 points while becoming the most decorated player in the history of the OHL.
The Second Act
Approaching the 2015 NHL Entry Draft, it was unsure which team would land McDavid. Toronto fans were hopeful he would end up on their team, some suggested that Arizona and Buffalo, the NHL’s worst teams of that year, tanked enough to improve their chances for McDavid. Some predicted the Oilers would win the draft lottery due to their playoff drought since 2006, however the Oilers won the draft lottery 3 of the last 4 years prior to this draft, meaning it was unlikely they would get that chance again. But odds and expectations broken, the Oilers won the draft lottery and landed the best player the NHL will see in this generation.
If it’s possible for a teenage Connor McDavid to exceed the hype, then that’s what he did in his rookie NHL season with the Edmonton Oilers. The buildup for the young center, who turned nineteen during that season, was built up since he stepped foot onto the ice. In his shortened rookie season, McDavid missed 37 games due to a fractured clavicle but scored 48 points (16 goals, 32 assists) in 45 games. The smaller sample size knocked him down to third in voting for the Calder Trophy, given to the top rookie in the NHL.
Even in an abbreviated rookie season, McDavid provided plenty of highlights. At the top of the list would be his five-point game on February 11th, 2016 in his first time facing his hometown team, the Toronto Maple Leafs. He had two goals and assisted on each of Jordan Eberle’s three goals in the Oilers’ 5-2 victory. McDavid took his game to another level in the 2016-17 season. He led the League with 100 points (30 goals, and 70 assists), won the Hart Trophy voted as NHL most valuable player and the Ted Lindsay Award as the most outstanding player as voted by members of the NHLPA to help the Oilers reach the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the first time since 2006.
McDavid signed an eight-year, $100 million extension with the Oilers on July 5th, 2017 and repeated as NHL scoring leader in 2017-18, scoring 108 points (41 goals, 67 assists) in 82 games, and winning the Ted Lindsay Award for the second straight season. In 2018-19, McDavid had an NHL career-high 116 points (41 goals, 75 assists) and finished third in Hart Trophy voting. In the abbreviated 2020-21 season McDavid lead the League with 105 points (33 goals, 72 assists) in 56 games. He averaged 1.88 points per game, the most by any player to play at least 50 games in a season since Mario Lemieux (2.30) and Jaromir Jagr (1.82) in 1995-96. McDavid scored at least one point in 45 of 56 games, including 18 with at least three points.
McDavid was voted the winner of the Ted Lindsay Award for the third time and became the second-ever unanimous winner of the Hart Trophy, getting all 100 first-place votes from members of the Professional Hockey Writers Association. The only other unanimous winner was Wayne Gretzky in 1981-82. On November 14th, 2021, McDavid became the sixth-fastest in NHL history to score 600 points when he had a goal and an assist for points 600 and 601 in a 5-4 win against the St. Louis Blues. Only Wayne Gretzky, Lemieux, Peter Stastny, Mike Bossy, and Jari Kurri took fewer games than McDavid to reach the milestone.
McDavid scored 123 points (44 goals, 79 assists) in 2021-22, the highest single season point total by an Edmonton skater since Mark Messier in 1989-90 (129 points; 45 goals, 84 assists). He became the seventh player in NHL history to win the Art Ross Trophy at least four times. He scored 14 points for the Oilers in a seven-game win against the Los Angeles Kings in the 2022 Western Conference First Round, the highest total in an opening round in 29 years and exceeded only by Gretzky and Lemieux. He became the fourth player in Oilers history with at least 10 assists in a playoff series. McDavid had a goal and an assist in his 500th NHL game, a 5-4 loss to the Washington Capitals on November 7th, 2022. His 724 points were the second-most through 500 games among players selected first in the NHL Draft behind Mario Lemieux.
Connor McDavid on the Edmonton Oilers.
On Thursday night’s game against the Philadelphia Flyers, Connor McDavid scored his 800th career point and 43rd and 44th goals this season in a 4-2 win. He also assisted Leon Draisaitl’s 700 point. Playing in his 545th game, McDavid became the fifth-fastest player in NHL history to hit the 800 point mark, behind Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux, Mike Bossy, and Peter Stastny. McDavid leads the NHL in goals and points with 105, so far this season. This spectacular performance will likely continue throughout Connor’s career. McDavid is already the stuff of legends, but there is still a question to be answered. Why?
The Prodigy on Ice
Connor McDavid could easily be defined as a hockey prodigy since he rollerbladed around his basement and set up obstacles in his driveway. It was clear to see that Connor was levels ahead of the average kid and the average player. According to psychologists, it is possible that most anyone could be a prodigy, with the right environment. With Connor’s environment of Canada, a nation that instills a love of hockey onto their children and citizens, along with the support from his family, it is no surprise that Connor’s talent flourished. Alongside a higher quality of cognitive development than the average person, Connor McDavid exhibited an unusual level of high commitment to his field, as all successful people must do. But Connor started doing at a young age, and stuck with it. Developmental psychologist Ellen Winner writes, “Often one cannot tear these children away from activities in their area of giftedness. These children have a powerful interest in the domain in which they have high ability, and they can focus so intently on work in this domain that they lose sense of the outside world.” Winner argues that this single-mindedness is a part of innate talent rather than a cause of it—a convergence of genetically-influenced adeptness, interest, and drive that predisposes a person to obsessively engage in some activity. This statement connects directly to a child Connor McDavid who would spend hours upon hours of practicing in his driveway, dedicating his childhood to the game he was so gifted in. The question of if experts are “born” or “made” is answered in the simple combination of nature and nurture, the genetics you inherit and the environment you are a part of. Through studies, it was determined that prodigies thrive from both factors. As the psychologist Jonathan Wai put it, “Experts are born, then made.” In this case, Connor McDavid was born, then made himself what he is today.
Featured Articles
Featured Writers
