To write about Connor McDavid’s draft day, you must write about the lead-up.
Two years before McDavid could even be selected, then–Dallas GM Joe Nieuwendyk went to watch him play. The Hall of Famer wasn’t alone in making that trip, but his on-ice credentials gave Nieuwendyk’s opinion extra weight.
Was he worth the hype?
"Oh yes," Nieuwendyk said. "He’s special."
Soon, it so was obvious, you didn’t need to have scored 564 NHL goals and won three Stanley Cups to see it. Sportsnet became "The McDavid Network." The world juniors became a referendum on McDavid vs. Eichel as much as a competition between countries. At least one organization openly tanked their season to get him.
I had a spot slightly behind and to the right of NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly during the draft lottery. When he opened the Edmonton envelope, I could see the gold background. Half a second before he announced it, I knew they’d won. I gasped, and hoped no one heard it. But no one looked more disappointed than McDavid. It was impossible to look at him and not think, "This is going to be a problem. Will he go?"
The next day, his agent, Jeff Jackson, doused any five-alarm blaze. "There’s no story here," Jackson said. "He’s going. It’s fine."
A few days later, I spoke to someone who knows the McDavid family. "When you’re the top pick, you don’t think about the lottery," he explained. "You look at the standings and say, ‘It’s Buffalo or Arizona.’ You imagine being in those cities. You try to warn him and say, ‘Hey, it could be someone else,’ but he’s 18. He doesn’t think that way. Mentally, he’s going to Buffalo. As a Toronto-area kid, he was happy with that. So it was a shock. But everything will be fine."
On draft night, McDavid and his family sat in the second row of the lower bowl. A reporter’s instinct is to try to read McDavid’s face for clues or insights, though you reach a point where that’s kind of creepy and off-putting. But you could tell he was thinking, "Can this be over already?"
Finally, two months after he learned his NHL home would be Edmonton, the Oilers made it official. The sweater was on. The smile was genuine. The wait was over.
"I think it was even better than I expected," McDavid said.
Shouldn’t every draftee feel that way?
