Edmonton Oilers in dire need of a puck-moving defenceman to keep up with Connor McDavid

By Corruption Buzz On Jan 28, 2023

What Connor McDavid needs is a Chris Pronger.

Not the actual Pronger, who had to quit because of concussions and now sits on the NHL’s player safety board — which seems a trifle odd because he was an all-world defenceman who was suspended eight different times for 22 games when he was a player, but we digress.

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We mean a defenceman like the surefire Hall of Famer who made the 60-foot pass to a forward absolutely routine. If not Pronger, then a 22-year-old Paul Coffey who made life so ridiculously easy for Wayne Gretzky and Mark Messier, hitting them at the Oilers’ blue-line — when Coffey wasn’t going end-to-end with it, of course.

It’s not just to McDavid. It’s to Hall and Jordan Eberle and Leon Draisaitl.

The Oilers are crying for a puck-moving defenceman to get the attack going, which is why Oilers general manager Peter Chiarelli will definitely be making a big deal at the draft (giving up Hall or Eberle or Ryan Nugent-Hopkins) to get one. Kevin Shattenkirk would be my No. 1 target, but his contract is up July 1, 2017, and he’d have agree to a long-term deal before a trade. Sami Vatanen would look good with the Oilers, too.

“Pronger never skated the puck up the ice by himself but every time you got a pass, you were flying and there was nobody around you,” former Oilers captain Shawn Horcoff said of his one year with Pronger, when the Oilers made it to the Cup final in 2006. “And it was right on the tape, and you’re thinking ‘this is great.’ It made a forward’s job so much easier.

“I don’t know if you can put a value on that type of player.”

McDavid has tools that very few players have — he should be rookie-of-the-year because he’s a dynamic player like Pavel Bure in 1992, when he played only 65 games and won the Calder — and he only turned 19 in January. But he’d be unstoppable on a lot of nights if the game’s fastest player got the puck way more often in flight. Nobody skates as effortlessly.

“He’s got perfect posture,” said a longtime pro scout, in awe of how he picks up speed.

“Some guys going fast start to bend over and their feet sometimes get them in trouble. Not McDavid. He just keeps getting faster. Perfect (upright) posture.”

Horcoff agrees.

When told the game is so fast now because everybody skates like McDavid, Horcoff chortled.

“No, they don’t,” he said.

“Andy (O’Brien) was my trainer, and he was big on angles with skaters. He said the best players have the shin and the back ankle at 45 and 45 (degrees). So if you draw a line down your sternum … it’s a science thing, you’re always perfectly balanced,” said Horcoff.

“When I see Connor, he’s perfectly balanced.

“That way, you can take a check from both sides, and if you want to go in any direction, they don’t have to take that extra step where you have to transfer weight,” Horcoff continued.

“He’s a great talent and from the people I talk to, they all say he’s a sponge.”

“Can you believe they (Oilers) won that (draft lottery)?”

When Hall of Famer Igor Larionov, maybe the smartest forward to ever play (they called him The Professor), was asked about McDavid this week, he raved about him.

“He kind of reminds me of Mark Messier,” said Larionov.

“High-speed and skill, and his decision-making is always right. Always a threat to score a goal or make a play. It’s a gift and, to me, there is nobody close to him in today’s game.

“He’s only 19. It’s nice to have a player like that. He makes a lot of people around him better. My vision of his linemates is they have to skate and be smart to play with him.”

Smart, yes. Trying to keep up? Different story.

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