In early December, the Edmonton Oilers were coming apart at the seams — they couldn’t defend, they couldn’t get a save, and even Connor McDavid didn’t look much like himself.

“[We] had some looks, passed some away — myself more than anybody,” said McDavid, following a lethargic performance by his club. They had been blanked 1-0 by the Minnesota Wild, falling to 26th place in the NHL.

McDavid had 36 points through 27 games, good for fifth in league scoring, but concerning trends were taking place under the hood.

His shot attempts had fallen to just 12.3 per hour, which was the worst rate since his rookie season.

The Oilers were outscored 25-21 in his five-on-five minutes.

His usual assertiveness with the puck was practically absent.

That loss to the Wild on December 2 felt like a new low for McDavid. But it was also a turning point.

Following his self-criticism that evening, McDavid produced at a 152-point pace and led the league in both goals (37) and points (102) over the final 55 games of the season. He started taking the puck to the net with authority again, increasing his shot attempt rates to roughly 14 per hour. By the end of the season, he had nearly twice as many slot-driving plays as any other player in the NHL.

According to HockeyViz, McDavid drove offence at an impressive 23 per cent higher rate than league average, while driving defensive results four per cent above-average. The Oilers finished the season plus-seven with McDavid on the ice at five-on-five, and minus-21 without him.

By February, McDavid had reclaimed his spot as the NHL’s most dominant offensive player. That momentum carried over to the Milano-Cortina Olympics, where he put Canada on his back. He led the tournament with 13 points in six games, the most ever by an NHLer at the Olympics. According to The Hockey PDOcast’s Dimitri Filipovich, he had 65 scoring chance contributions in the tournament, which was 16 more than the next closest player, his linemate, Macklin Celebrini. Despite his legendary performance at the Olympics, McDavid failed to get on the scoresheet in the gold-medal game against the US, and Canada settled for silver.

Following his best regular season since 2022-23, McDavid suffered a broken foot in Game 2 of Edmonton’s first-round series against the Anaheim Ducks. Injuries mounted at the top of the lineup, and McDavid struggled to move with the patented speed and agility that he frequently burns defenders with. Instead, he went minus-eight and scored only one goal with five assists in a six-game series loss. It was an abrupt and disappointing ending to an otherwise brilliant season.

On June 7, McDavid won his fifth Ted Lindsey Award for the NHL’s most outstanding player, voted by his peers. He joined Wayne Gretzky as the only player to win the award five times. Less than a week later, he finished second in Hart Trophy voting, losing by one of the narrowest margins in the award’s history. At this point, McDavid has accomplished just about every individual accolade a player could want. But he finished another season without doing the thing he truly wanted: to win.

Losing a hotly contested Olympic gold medal game, after back-to-back defeats in the Stanley Cup Final, must be weighing on him. He’s as competitive as they come. With two years remaining on his $12.5 million extension with the Oilers, it feels like the doomsday clock is ticking on the McDavid era in Edmonton. If the front office can’t prove that they’re headed in a winning direction this season, they might risk losing their best player since Gretzky.