Connor McDavid Is Done Being Chirped At

In a career with a trajectory that could only be mimicked by a rocket developed by whatever they call the NASA of Canada [Ed.: the Canadian Space Agency, or the Agence Spatiale Canadienne in French], last season, Connor McDavid finally experienced a failure to launch. It wasn’t totally the 21 year old’s fault—he led the league in scoring for the second year in a row. But his team, the Edmonton Oilers, the storied franchise that Gretzky made famous, sucked. Before last season, McDavid’s career was arcing upward as if a group of rocket scientists had meticulously engineered each stage: on skates since the age of four, coached by his dad to four straight junior league trophies, only the third kid ever to be granted “Exceptional Player” status by Hockey Canada, drafted first overall by the Oilers in 2015, named the NHL’s MVP in 2017 upon leading the Oilers back to the playoffs after an 11-year absence, signed a $100 million contract before he was old enough to drink. And then last year, with the Oilers finishing sixth in the Pacific division, completely out of the playoffs, that rocket, for the first time, slowed down a little.

So what’s McDavid going to do now? Did his boss Wayne Gretzky send him deep into the Canadian wilderness this off-season, demanding that he completely retool his game from the bottom up? Uh, no. The Oilers are counting on McDavid, the fastest hockey player in the league, with a mutant pass-first vision not seen since The Great One, to simply be a slightly better version of last year’s Connor McDavid. It's a very Canadian plan.

You started playing up when you were five years old, going up against nine year olds. Did you perceive yourself as an underdog back then?
I was five, playing against those nine year olds, the last year of house league before you get into rep [Canadian term for traveling youth hockey league]. After that I always played up, always one year behind. And I definitely took a lot of pride in being the youngest in the league, so much so that I decided to wear 97, and that’s stuck with me.

What does the 97 number mean?
It’s the year I was born.

Amazing. So were you a cocky five year old?
[Laughs.] No! I was definitely not the cocky kid. I was probably on the other end of the spectrum—I was quiet. I remember a time when there was a skills competition, and I think I was five, and I was so nervous to even compete that I chose not to do the skating part.

You still seem like a quiet guy. Is there a time when you ever started to feel cocky?
I’m definitely still on the quieter side. Definitely not cocky. But I have a quiet confidence. I definitely believe in myself. And I don’t need to show that on the outside. I just don’t feel like I need to tell people how I feel about myself. I know my skills and I know what I’m comfortable in, and I keep it to myself.

When you got the “exceptional player” designation, how does that work? Did you have to say, “I’m better than everybody, so I need this opportunity”?
[Chuckles.] I mean, there’s a little bit of that. I was playing with the kids a year older than me still, and it was their draft year. It wasn’t my draft year. John Tavares had gotten exceptional player status, and then Aaron Ekblad, who was the year before me, got exceptional player status. It felt like the right thing to do. It was the age group that I always kind of played with. It didn’t really make sense that I wouldn’t be able to move on with the kids that I grew up with, so I just applied for it—and luckily enough, I was able to get it. And it’s something that I’m pretty proud of, still to this day.

When I was in high school in Minnesota, the hockey kids were the coolest kids. They had the mullet, but incorporated this spiky skateboarder’s side part into it—this is back in the '90s. Did you have a style in Toronto?
My style was not good. It’s definitely something that’s grown over time. As a kid I wore my team’s tracksuit all the time. Splash pants or track pants. I wore a hat every day. And then when I got to the NHL, guys would make fun of me that I had the worse style in the league. I showed up for my first road trip and all the guys have these Gucci bags and these Louis Vuitton bags—you know, these sweet bags. And I showed up with my Erie Otters team bag, and [Oilers vet] Eddie Purcell was like, “Dude, what are you doing with that?” Well, what do you mean, it’s my bag, what am I supposed to do? “Go out and buy yourself a nice bag.” Sure enough, had to go out and buy myself a nice Tumi bag. Next thing you know, they’re chirping my hair. “You gotta go get a nicer hair cut than that—that’s awful.” I think it’s a little bit better now, but I still have some work to do.

Who does your hair?
I’m not somebody that’s too particular about it. This girl Shayla in Edmonton. And then I had this guy, Moe, that did it for a bit. But I’m actually growing it out right now. So I haven’t had it cut in four or five months at least.

You’re a blonde dude?
Yeah, it’s like a blondey red. As much as I hate to admit it.

So you’re going to look like Thor.
Sure! I’ll go with that.

I wrote a story for GQ on NBA fashion a few years ago when that was really starting to pop. But the NHL, you guys slash each other if you try to stand out. If your hair is too nice, or not nice enough, you’ll get chirped. It’s like an enforced humility, and it’s violently enforced.
Yeah! I definitely agree with that. I don’t get chirped about it very much anymore, because I think I have it under control now.

So you’re trying to dress better to fit in actually.
Exactly! In hockey, there’s definitely that middle ground where you need to be, and as soon as you get out of the middle, you start getting chirped again. I’m definitely not one of those guys that’s chirping the guys that dress super nice, because you know, there’s guys out there in the league—and on my team in fact—that have great style. And I’m just like, “go for it, man, you look good!”

So who’s the Russell Westbrook of the NHL?
Well it’s different, right? I mean, you have to wear suits. We don’t really have a choice. So it’s anything you can do with your suit. I would say PK [Subban] does some pretty out-there stuff with his suit that’s kind of nice. [Henrik] Lundqvist always gets a lot of talk. There’s a lot of European style out there. Those guys wear some pretty nice suits.

So you don’t want to do PK’s look, because it would be more dangerous for you?
You’ll never see me with PK’s style. But I’m definitely okay with it, I think.

You won your second Art Ross trophy [given to the player with the most points] in a row last year even though you started off slow because you were so sick...as in, physically ill. Then you kept it secret until late November. So what was that—some weird Canadian flu?
[Laughs.] I don’t know what it was. I got really sick kind of early, in late October. It just kind of stuck with me. I lost a bunch of weight. I didn’t miss any games, which was probably, in hindsight, what dragged it on the most. So I just tried to continue on with daily life, and that’s not what you’re supposed to do when you’re sick. So a lot of it is on me.

How miserable was the town of Edmonton during a losing season last that?
It was awful. It was terrible. It was miserable around town. I remember everyone just chirping at you all the time. I was at dinner one time with my parents, and I was walking out and guys were chirping me. They’re passionate people and passionate fans. When you’re winning, you’re a hero in this city, and when you’re losing they want to run you right out of it. They’re just passionate, and you have to be able to understand that.

At the end of the year, you scored goals at a clip that people expected you to start out with: 27 in the last 30 games. But none of your regular linemates—and you went through a lot of different linemates last year—even cracked the top 100 in scoring. Why not take the LeBron James approach and hold the management’s feet to the fire a little bit?
You see that a lot less in hockey, guys moving around, and guys joining teams. It’s just because the salary cap is so tight in hockey. You can’t just go out and buy players and make a super team, because it’s so hard to do that. The salary cap doesn’t allow it. We have a much smaller salary cap than the NBA, and they only have 12 on a roster.

Your teammates are basically the same going into this year, right?
Yeah. We didn’t make too many changes and that’s something I feel good about. I believe in this group. I believed in them last year. Now everyone is back healthy. And it’s a mindset thing. I think last year we maybe thought that things were just going to come to us. And we were expected to win, so we were going to win. And that’s not the case in this league.

You played as well as you can play statistically last year. So what do you need to do for you to be MVP again?
Hockey’s about winning games and about having a team goal, and we weren’t very good last year, so, you know, I shouldn’t have been MVP. And that was obviously the clear choice on the media side, whereas the players felt a little bit different. And I appreciate that. [Connor repeated as the Ted Lindsay Award winner, which is voted on exclusively by the players.]

So you put your second Art Ross trophy right in your bathroom then, or what?
[Laughs.] Well, you definitely don’t take it for granted. It’s something that I’m definitely proud of. And those don’t come along very often, so you have to enjoy it, too.