Hockey Confidential

by Bob Mckenzie

  What’s curious is that every applicant for exceptional status, from Tavares to Day, has been in the OHL. It’s almost as if the exceptional-player process doesn’t exist in the rest of Canada. Some, especially in western Canada, mock it as just another bit of evidence that people in Ontario or Toronto believe they’re in the centre of the universe, in a rush to display a superiority complex. Is it actually possible that the only exceptional players in Canada in a nine-year stretch are from Ontario? That there are no exceptional players in western Canada, Quebec or the Maritimes?

  “Sidney Crosby applied for exceptional status with us,” Gilles Courteau, commissioner of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League said, “but that was before 2005, when there was no program in place. We turned him down. Since 2005, we haven’t had a player who has applied. I have no problem with the exceptional-player program. It’s a good one, but we just have not had that player yet. One day we will, and if he’s ruled as exceptional by Hockey Canada, we’ll welcome him to our league. We would definitely embrace that.”

  Western Hockey League commissioner Ron Robison espouses the same view as Courteau: “We are fully in support of it, we just haven’t had that player come along yet.” Despite Robison’s words, many are skeptical the WHL truly wants any part of it.

  “Don’t kid yourself,” one player agent said, “the WHL owners and GMs don’t want anything to do with the exceptional-player status. They discourage kids from going that route.”

  Robison did concede that two factors—the WHL bantam draft and the expansive geography of a league that stretches from Manitoba in the east to the U.S. Pacific Northwest in the west—may play a part in the practicality of not having had an exceptional player and why some players and/or parents maybe aren’t as eager to apply as in Ontario.

  In the WHL, players are drafted, or have their rights assigned, at age 15, after their major bantam year. In the OHL and QMJHL, players aren’t drafted until they’re 16, after their minor midget season. A 15-year-old drafted into the WHL is entitled to play only five games as a 15-year-old, but he knows where in the WHL he will play when he eventually gets there as a 16-year-old.

  “There could be an issue related to schooling, where a 15-year-old would have to travel great distances to play, which is different than Ontario,” Robison said. “And for many 15-year-olds in our league, they’re satisfied to play the five games for the team that has drafted them—that’s enough for them.”

  Even the skeptics who believe the WHL has anti-exceptional sentiment concede there hasn’t been an obvious slam dunk exceptional superstar like Tavares, Ekblad or McDavid in the west.

  Some believe Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Mathew Barzal, two British Columbia kids, were the best bet for exceptional status, but as highly skilled and talented both were as 15-year-olds, they were also quite physically immature at that age. There have been highly touted prospects since then—Tyler Benson of Edmonton (first overall to Vancouver Giants in the 2013 bantam draft) is one who comes to mind, but he opted to go to the Pursuit of Excellence Hockey Academy in Kelowna, British Columbia, for his 15-year-old season rather than push the exceptional envelope.

  “We’ve had some special kids, especially those taken in the 2013 draft, but I’m not sure you could say we have one who is as clearly exceptional as McDavid,” Kelowna Rockets owner and general manager Bruce Hamilton said.

  On the flip side, the exceptional player concept didn’t exist in 2002, when Crosby was attending Shattuck-St. Mary’s prep school in Minnesota, awaiting his chance to play in the QMJHL. As Courteau said, Crosby inquired and was denied by the Quebec league. Not getting exceptional status certainly didn’t hurt his development.

  “I think our results thus far speak for themselves,” Branch said, citing the accomplishments of Tavares, Ekblad and McDavid. “I believe it’s been a good process for the players involved and our league. It’s working as it was intended to work when we introduced it. There hasn’t been a rash of them. There haven’t been abuses of it. It’s a good process.”

  • • •

  The old African proverb says “It takes a village to raise a child,” and that most definitely rings true when the goal is to shepherd an exceptional and gifted young Canadian through the meat grinder that is elite-level hockey.

  Connor McDavid’s first line of defence will always be his dad, Brian, mom, Kelly, and older brother Cameron. There’s no substitute for family. But if a phenom like McDavid is going to fulfil his potential and get to where he wants to be—the summit, if you will—he’s going to need an extended family of sorts to help him climb that mountain. And like any talented young player in today’s game—even those not deemed “exceptional” per se—McDavid’s support team is in place.

  There’s Bobby Orr, of course, and the advisors and consultants who work with Orr. It was Darren Ferris who originally recruited McDavid to Orr Hockey, but Ferris left the company to start his own business. Former NHLer Jeff Jackson, a lawyer now, replaced Ferris and works closely with Connor and the McDavid clan to ensure the sailing is as smooth as it can be. Jackson’s good friend, former NHLer Dave Gagner (father of Arizona Coyotes centre Sam Gagner) is the agency’s director of player development. Gary Roberts, the former NHL player turned strength, conditioning and nutrition guru, oversees McDavid’s training and conditioning program.

  Collectively, between Connor’s actual family and his extended family/support group, the mandate is twofold: one, give him the tools necessary to be successful; two, put up walls around him to protect him from any pitfalls or distractions that may prevent him from being successful.

  “Kelly and I, we both spend a lot of time making sure he’s good,” Brian said. “We can’t imagine the pressure he feels sometimes. Those pressures come from the outside and we try to insulate him. We just want him to be a kid and play. Connor has very high standards—no one is going to be harder on Connor than Connor. He sometimes gets down on himself; it’s how he motivates himself. It’s a fine line.”

  In a sense, the process is almost counterintuitive. Connor has an insatiable desire to be special, to be noticed, to do things most kids his age couldn’t even dream about. To be exceptional on the biggest stage possible. But doing so creates attention and a wave of pressure on so many levels, with all those around him doing everything they can to diffuse that pressure. If there’s anyone who can identify with that, it’s Orr. He knows what it is to be phenomenal, though phenomenal today is a far cry from what it was in the 1960s.

  “All I was told when I was a young guy was, ‘Be home by dark,’” Orr said. “We’d go out on the pond all day. That was it. Times change. The world is more organized now. There are more distractions. The Internet, Twitter, rankings and ratings, haters, coaches, friends . . . what kids go through today is incredible. I never had to worry about any of that in Parry Sound. TSN wasn’t coming to Parry Sound. [He laughs.] Our job [as McDavid’s representatives] is to just make sure he’s able to play to his level, play at the level he’s capable of playing consistently, play to his strengths. That’s it.”

  It’s easier said than done. Sometimes, the enemy lies within. Which is to suggest that a teenager’s desire, even that of an exceptional one, to just be a teenager can be problematic. And that’s something Orr can mostly certainly identify with.

  “That part hasn’t changed,” Orr said. “I tell him, ‘Connor, you have to get your sleep because the level you are expected to play at it is a great responsibility. If you’re tired, you can’t do that. I was in the same position as you. I know you want to be with the guys, have fun, go here or there, but between the bus trips, all the games and practices . . .’ These kids, they want to be on the ice all the time. In the summer, they want to go to this camp or that camp or this event. . . . I never went to a summer hockey school until I turned pro, and I went as an instructor, not a student. There are just so many things that can make them physically or mentally tired, and if he’s tired, he ca
n’t play to his level, and his level is high and so are the expectations.”

  It’s a message that has been received loud and clear by Connor.

  “If I’m talking to Bobby for five minutes, he will mention five times I have to get my rest,” Connor said, laughing. “We talk a lot about sleep.”

  That’s because talking about sleep habits is more productive than talking about, say, pressure that is ubiquitous and always will be. McDavid and Orr know it’s always there; they don’t dwell on it. But Orr knows if McDavid takes care of himself, his ability and passion will make the pressure manageable.

  “He’ll have a chance to be a very good player,” Orr said. “He’s not Sidney Crosby. Sidney Crosby is Sidney Crosby. Connor McDavid is Connor McDavid. He’s 16 years old; give him time to put his own stamp on the game, whatever it is. Lots can happen. He’s got a lot to learn, but that will come. He’s so smart. Watch how he gets up on his skates. How he sees the ice, how he passes the puck, how he shoots it. He just loves to play. As long as he keeps that passion and never loses it, as long as he is able to play at his level, that’s all he needs. Our job is to talk to him, keep his feet on the ground. I’m certainly not going to tell him how to play. The pressure is always going to be there—it’s everywhere he goes. I never had to deal with that. No one in my time did. So we’ll all work together to protect him as best we can from that.”

  Of course, there’s only so much anyone can do. He can’t be put in the mental equivalent of bubble wrap. If a pressure-free existence were the goal, McDavid wouldn’t have played hockey. Pressure has been a constant companion since he started playing. At times, he even welcomes it, uses it as fuel. Other times, though, he knows it can gnaw at him.

  “Honestly, I felt pressure more when I was a lot younger,” McDavid said. “I never played against my own age, and I was one of the best players. That’s when I would get really nervous, maybe not sleep the night before a game. I still feel pressure—I’m sure everyone who plays feels pressure—but I don’t feel as it as much now as when I was younger.”

  Still, he welcomes those rare moments, the so-called “quiet times,” when he’s hanging with teammates, grabbing a bite to eat, horsing around and thinking or talking about anything other than hockey.

  Most of the time, though, Connor McDavid is constantly being figuratively weighed and measured. If you get exceptional status, if you get called a generational talent the likes of which hasn’t been seen since Crosby burst onto the scene, every time you step on the ice is a test. Someone is seeing you for the first time; someone is making a judgment: What’s all the fuss about?

  Growing up exceptional is like a Canadian torture test. The bar is set high, perhaps unattainably so, on an endless series of challenges. Crosby never escapes the scrutiny. Regardless of what level McDavid finds for himself, that, too, will be his lot in life. Some days, he’ll come out on the right side of the ledger; sometimes the wrong side.

  He passed his first major test after getting exceptional status by playing well in his OHL rookie season. He scored 25 goals and 66 points in 63 games as a 15-year-old with the last-place Otters. Phenomenal numbers. He might have made it look a lot easier than it was.

  “It was hard,” McDavid said. “I was putting up numbers. I started a 15-game point streak in my second game of the [rookie] season. It was amazing, I loved it, but it wasn’t easy at all. It was hard. The league was so fast. The physical demands were really tough. I wasn’t that strong, and I was going up against Dougie Hamilton, Cody Ceci, Scott Harrington and Olli Maatta. I didn’t do a very good job of taking care of my body. I let little injuries slip by.”

  And while his season totals were terrific, the 15-year-old suffered more than enough angst over the course of a tumultuous rookie season in Erie, as the Otters finished with only 47 points, second-fewest in the entire league.

  His dad can laugh now about Connor’s first few days in Erie, coming out of the dressing room after three consecutive lopsided preseason losses.

  “He comes out looking pale and distraught,” Brian said. “He’s saying, ‘I can’t take this, I can’t take all this losing.’ It was the preseason. I told him, ‘It’s early. It’s going to get better.’ He told me, ‘It’s gonna be a long year.’”

  And it was. In late November, head coach Robbie Ftorek was fired by the Otters. Kris Knoblauch was hired as his replacement. There was more losing; it seemed like the team was spiralling downwards. Connor called home late one night. He was homesick, sick of losing, feeling like he was on a sinking ship where some of the players had checked out. In that regard, there was nothing exceptional about a homesick 15-year-old. His was a call that lots of parents get from their kids playing junior hockey. Brian McDavid drove to Erie that next day to make sure his son was okay, settle him down and help him work through his upset feelings.

  At Christmas in that rookie OHL season, he played as an under-ager for Team Ontario at the World Under-17 Challenge. It was a disaster of sorts for what many thought was a stacked Ontario team that should compete for gold. They finished a disappointing sixth. McDavid led his team in scoring with six goals and nine points in five games, but he took it as a failed test.

  “He was crushed,” Brian McDavid said. “He took that all very personally.”

  By all accounts, the team was plagued by jealousy and infighting. McDavid was often the target. A couple of teammates reportedly rode him hard on the exceptional angle, and as the tourney wore on, Team Ontario more or less unravelled.

  But there were many good times for a 15-year-old kid, occasions when the perks of being Connor McDavid paid big dividends. Like in February, when McDavid and a couple of Erie teammates got to go to a Pittsburgh Penguin game. And watch the game with Pens owner Mario Lemieux in a private suite. And meet Crosby after the game. And get a picture taken between Mario and Sid, a photo that was widely circulated in the media and on the Internet, dubbed by many as “The Past, Present and Future of Hockey.”

  “It was weird, it was wild,” Connor said. “It was pretty cool.”

  It was, however, also an illustration of how a simple “cool thing”—getting a picture taken with a couple of your hockey superheroes—can amplify the pressure and expectations. As in the “Past, Present and Future” angle. Mario did his thing; Crosby’s doing his; where’s the new kid going to fit into that pantheon of greats? Is he worthy of being in their universe?

  The truth is, there’s no escaping it. The photo was, on one level, just McDavid being the same as any teenage kid getting to meet his hockey heroes. But McDavid isn’t just any teenage kid, so there’s always another layer to it.

  The Crosby comparisons are inevitable. McDavid grew up idolizing Crosby; Crosby saw McDavid play once and immediately pronounced that he reminded Sid of himself. They have different body types—McDavid is going to be taller and rangier than Crosby—but their dynamic first-step acceleration, otherworldly hockey IQ and insane ability to score or make plays can’t be ignored.

  Oh, there’s one other thing they share. Crosby is one of the most superstitious players in the NHL. McDavid will challenge him for that title.

  “He’s got his lucky underwear, and they could walk out of the arena,” Brian said. “If we drove to the rink, we had to listen to the same songs and drive the same way because we won or he had a good game when he did it that way last time. We would have to park in the same spot. He packs the bag exactly the same way every time: left shin pad, right shin pad, he zips it, he unzips it—he has his routines. When he gets dressed, it’s always in the same order—one side, and then the other.”

  “If Brian and Connor drove to the game together last time and they won,” Kelly added, “Connor would tell me I’d have to sit in the backseat because he didn’t want to change things up. Good luck with that. It’s not happening.”

  The best part of that OHL rookie season, as fate would have it, was that the Otters were a non-p
layoff team. So Hockey Canada added McDavid to its roster for the 2013 World Under-18 Championships that April in Sochi, Russia.

  McDavid turned the hockey world on its ear. A double under-ager, two years younger than everyone else in the tourney, he shredded the competition, leading Canada to a gold medal and being named tourney MVP, scoring eight goals and 14 points in his first five games before being shut out in his final two contests. A number of the games were televised nationally in Canada on TSN.

  As well known as he already was, it was a huge coming-out party for him. NHL scouts returned from Sochi raving about his dynamic play, mentioning him as a challenger to inherit Crosby’s “best player in the world” mantle one day. They declared him the prohibitive favourite to be the No. 1 pick in the 2015 NHL draft. It was all quite heady stuff, even by exceptional-player standards.

  “It was such a good end to a season that was a lot more difficult for him than people realized,” his father said. “When he came home, he was so tired. The first thing he said to me when he got back was, ‘My legs are done.’ He was gone for a month. He said it was the biggest grind he’d ever been through. It was so intense. But he loved it.”

  McDavid spent the summer of 2013 working hard with fitness guru Roberts. He took to heart Orr’s pleas to take care of his body, to get rest, to eat properly, to train hard and get a lot stronger.