Connor McDavid’s defensive skills are better than your defensive skills

A lot of great things happened in Vegas this past Saturday. Connor got his 200th career point, Connor turned 21, Darnell Nurse scored two goals including the game winner in OT, and the list goes on. Amongst all the awesomeness that was Saturday, Connor McDavid made one of the most underrated plays of the weekend that likely went unnoticed, and I want to talk about it.

The scene is set: It’s the second period of a 1-1 hockey game, the Oilers have a slight edge over Vegas but it’s anybody’s game. Cody Eakin and Erik Haula are on two on one against – guess who – the birthday boy. Granted Connor initially gave the puck up to Eakin, he was still the first one on the back-check and was left playing out of his position.

Cody Eakin tried to go wide on McDavid but started to lose control of the puck. At this point, he had two options, either drive to the net or pass it back to Haula who was in a much better scoring position than he was in. Instead of getting caught skating to the side of the net with Eakin, Connor McDavid anticipated that he didn’t have a good scoring chance, stopped where he was, and easily picked off Eakin’s pass to Haula. Erik Haula was also banging his stick on the ice trying to attract ALL of the attention to him, but I still see way too many defenceman not recognizing this and getting carried away focussing on the player with the puck.

I GUARANTEE you that 7/10 NHL defenceman don’t have the patience and hockey IQ to make this play look as easy and smooth as Connor did. He embarrassed Eakin as he passed the puck right onto Connor’s stick. Connor then went full power-boost mode from a standstill to create a scoring chance at the other end of the ice. So calm! So elegant!

This small defensive play is so subtle and brilliant and it really shows off Connor’s hockey smarts. Not only can he put up 100 points a year, but he also puts in the work in the defensive zone and bails us out when we need it. The reason I’m so blown away by this play is that I see NHL defencemen every game overplay 2-on-1’s and Connor, who’s not even a d-man executes it perfectly. OR maybe I’ve been playing too much beer league hockey and wanted to rant about poor defensive plays.