"I haven't got any updates, so I'm not sure. We're hoping everything is fine, but ya, I can't comment on that."
That was the response from Edmonton Oilers head coach Kris Knoblauch when asked whether Connor McDavid is dealing with something and if the injury scare in Game 2 might have affected the captain's play the rest of the way.
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McDavid left the ice at one point in the contest, going down the tunnel and then returning after a couple of minutes in the back. He seemed to be moving fine, as if it were to suggest there was no injury. Still, he didn't look right.
If the lack of production by McDavid wasn't about his getting tangled up with Mattias Ekholm -- and it probably wasn't, because McDavid hasn't been his typical McDavid self through two games in this series -- something feels off.
It's hard to explain. This isn't the McDavid everyone knows.
He's had moments throughout the regular season where he perhaps tried too much. Maybe the biggest complaint was that he chose to make the extra pass when the shot was there.
McDavid (who might have the NHL's best handles at high speed) is fighting the puck. Arguably more than he's ever fought it. Mark Spector pulled no punches when he wrote, "Worst five periods of playoff hockey I've ever seen McDavid play. He is strug-gling."
"I think he's putting a lot of pressure on himself. Obviously, he wants the team to do well; he's a leader, and usually when we have success, he's a big part of that," the coach said when trying to come up with an explanation for whatever is going on.
He proceeded to take a glass-is-half-full approach and added, "There are stretches during the season that he hasn't been the best player, you know, there are nights that he hasn't been outstanding. It doesn't happen very often. I'm certain he's going to find his game."
The Oilers had better hope so, because this was another game where the top line, led by the best player in the world, wasn't anything close to the best line on the ice. Worse yet, the almost always-deadly power play looks like it has very little life. They don't have a goal on the man advantage, and most of the players on that unit aren't producing... in any capacity.
McDavid said that people need to remember that the Oilers just got Leon Draisaitl back and Zach Hyman was out. It will take some time for that group to click again, he suggested. Ironically, McDavid was the least effective of the five. He was dancing, but often by himself and into a crowd. He struggled to handle the puck, find the open pass, or get through the Ducks' defenders. He coughed up the puck several times, and zone entries?... that's another story altogether.
The one-man entry machine looks like it could use a repairman.
When asked how his team was effectively shutting down McDavid, Ducks' head coach Joel Quenneville said after the game, "Our guys have done a nice job either eliminating him getting the puck or being above. We still need the goalie to make saves as well, but he's [McDavid] got that look down the middle in the series, three or four good opportunities down the gut, and it's dangerous."
As much as Anaheim has done an admirable job on No. 97, the Oilers are not helping themselves with a series of unforced errors leading to chances and goals against. McDavid was by far the biggest culprit.
An exclamation mark was stamped on his night when a terrible breakout on the power play resulted in McDavid passing the puck to an area where no one was. Alex Killorn skated back into the zone and hit Ryan Poehling with a pass for the tip-in past Connor Ingram.
McDavid and the Oilers continue to struggle to find their footing in this series. Perhaps lucky that it's only 1-1, the Ducks have frustrated Edmonton, and the series goes back to Anaheim tied. The good news is that it could be a 2-0 series lead for the Ducks.
The bad news is that McDavid doesn't look like himself. Why that is remains a mystery.