Has Connor McDavid just scored the greatest goal of his career?
The greatest player in the world scored the goal of the 2021-22 season, and it may have been the most spectacular he's ever scored...so far, at least
As Zach Hyman and Jesse Puljujarvi waited for the soundcheck to be completed prior to facing their post-game questions, they looked like a couple of high school kids who had just pulled off the best senior prank ever. It was impossible to wipe the smiles off their faces. Of course, grinning comes a lot easier when you come out of the gate at 9-1-0 the way the Edmonton Oilers have. Man, Wayne Gretzky’s teams never even did that.
Part of the reason they were smiling was the player who had taken to the podium just before they did, and well, you know Connor McDavid. He’s all business. Hyman and Puljujarvi were grinning because they were happy, but also because they had just witnessed something sublime.
Oops, Connor did it again.
For those of you who haven’t seen it, McDavid scored the highlight goal of the season Friday night. With just under three minutes left and the Oilers trailing the New York Rangers 5-4, McDavid gathered the puck in the neutral zone, gained the offensive zone after waiting for Puljujarvi to get back onside, then sliced through four Rangers and deked Rangers goalie Alexandar Georgiev to tie the score. “Just Connor being Connor,” Hyman said. “I think it’s the best goal I’ve ever seen. No. 1.”
We’ll take his word for it. Hyman was on the Toronto Maple Leafs’ bench the night of Jan. 6, 2020 when McDavid scored a goal that, until Friday night, was the most spectacular of his career. Once again gathering the puck in the neutral zone, McDavid made Morgan Rielly look like Aki Berg circa-2001, selling pass before accelerating and beating Rielly before elevating it over Leaf goalie Michael Hutchinson from in close.
We’ll probably be debating which one was more spectacular for the next couple of days, but the goal against the Leafs was an insurance goal. The one against the Rangers was a tying goal in the dying minutes in a game in which they battled back from being down 4-1 with a bunch of ex-Oilers in the house for the retirement of Kevin Lowe’s No. 4. Perhaps that’s the clincher right there, not that McDavid was about to make a definitive choice.
“Yeah, it was a nice goal,” McDavid said in true McDavid style. “I’ve scored some nice ones in my career and that’s up there with a few of them. I just thought the timing of it, with the crowd and the night, it definitely felt a little bigger than just a game in November. It was a nice goal, but I’ve scored some nice ones. I’m paid to score big goals and I’m paid to do that type of stuff and I’m just doing my job.”
Defenseman Darnell Nurse was on the Oilers’ bench that night in 2020 and he had this to say about McDavid’s goal: “It was one of the nicest goals I've ever seen. Probably the nicest goal I've ever seen.”
Puljujarvi was playing back in Finland when McDavid scored his goal against the Leafs in 2020 at a time when nobody thought they’d see him again in Edmonton. He probably wasn’t smiling as much those days as he was Friday night. McDavid’s goal didn’t just make him smile. It made him laugh. “He had good speed and I was thinking, ‘What’s he going to do?’ ” Puljujarvi said. “Then he just went there and a couple of nice moves and he gets a nice goal and I was just laughing. It was like, funny. Funny to watch what he did. That was an unreal goal.”