POST-GAME: McDavid's OT magic highlights his remarkable start

EDMONTON, AB - "I think anybody can see blood, but he's one of the special ones that can smell it."
Those were the words of Head Coach Jay Woodcroft about the play of his captain Connor McDavid last night, who put a stamp on his sublime early season performance with a breathtaking overtime winner to knock off the Western Conference leading Golden Knights on Saturday.
The goal came well over a minute into the opening shift of 3-on-3 OT, a shift too long for most coaches, but Woodcroft said prior to the game that you make exceptions for the player that he, and most others, considers the best hockey player in the world.
"Do you make allowances for his talent?" Woodcroft mused. "Of course. There's a difference between sameness and fairness."
The reason why was on full display last night -- as McDavid collected the puck, knocked away the stick of star defender Alex Pietrangelo, accelerated in the way only he can, and roofed the game-winning goal over the shoulder of Adin Hill with a quick flick of his wrists.

McDavid currently leads the National Hockey league with an incredible 34 points in his first 18 games, with 16 of them being goals. If the 25-year-old were to maintain this pace over the course of the season, he would conclude the campaign with 73 goals, 82 assists, and 155 points. The goal total would be the most since Alexandre Mogilny and Teemu Selanne both notched 76 in the 1992-93 season and the point total would last be matched by Mario Lemieux in 1995-96 when he recorded 161. McDavid has set such a high bar for himself, it somehow is still incredulous that he still may not have hit the ceiling of his potential.
The remarkable part of McDavid's performance is he didn't seem to have his A-game early in the contest. The Oilers captain admitted he was fighting through some equipment issues and puck management issues from the opening faceoff.
"It happens. It happens to everybody," McDavid said. "It's something that you go through, and like I said, I was fighting the puck all night; a couple of terrible plays trying to be on the right side of the puck all night not give up anything defensively and pitching in when I could and making it count when I got my chance."

As the game wore on, the real Connor McDavid stood up.
The Oilers captain started just 38 seconds into the third period, capitalizing off a Vegas turnover and finding Zach Hyman for the cross-seam pass for the winger's ninth goal of the season. It was obvious McDavid had turned the early embers of his game into a full-on inferno when he nearly added to his laundry list of all-time goals at the 14:20 mark of the third period.
With the puck sliding towards the redline and Shea Theodore closing quickly, McDavid used his speed to get to it first and then pirouetted around the Vegas defender to find himself all alone on Hill. McDavid snapped a quick shot which gave the Golden Knights goalie a world of trouble, falling back into the net but managing to just keep the puck from crossing the goal line.
While McDavid didn't net the goal, it was a sign of what would be coming later in the contest.
"When he turns it on, it's fun to watch and big moments he's there," Ryan Nugent-Hopkins said about his captain. "Maybe it was his version of fighting the puck, but we'd all like to fight it like that for sure. He stuck with it and obviously you got to be confident to be able to make that play and that confidence didn't waver for him."
"I look back maybe against New York last year and when we scored that goal, I was kind of bad all night again and fighting it," McDavid added. "There are nights like that where you just don't have it, and tonight was that night for me. The boys did a great job of playing and giving us a chance, and I was just trying to contribute when I got my chance."