It was reported over the weekend that Connor McDavid would be living with Taylor Hall during his first NHL season.
There was a lot of mixed reaction on social media when that report surfaced, but at the end of the day none of that matters. The traditional line of thinking is that a young player like McDavid should live with a veteran in a stable home. There are many examples of this kind of arrangement for high profile NHL Rookies. We need only think back to Crosby living with Lemieux or even way back to Gretzky living with the Sathers.
McDavid with Hall is obviously not along the same lines exactly, but the situation is not without at least some merits. McDavid is going to be living with Edmonton’s best player (until it proves that Hall is the one living with Edmonton’s best player), he’s going to be living with someone who knows what it’s like to be a 1st Overall pick and the face of a Franchise, and he’s going to be living with a 5 year veteran who happens to be close to his own age.
The alternative, it seems, was that the Oilers place Connor McDavid with the Ference family. This is a situation that also would have been just fine from a social perspective. Andrew Ference is by all accounts a solid pro and an all-around good person. He’s served well as the Oilers Captain off the ice and I don’t doubt for a second that he would have been a great host to McDavid. Hey, maybe he could have had some free babysitting too.
However, the downside to Ference or any other older Oiler veteran player is that we don’t really know who among them is in the long term plans for the club. With Ference in particular the player has an almost unmovable contract and but he’s also surely going to be forced out of a spot in the top 6 defense positions anywhere from 1 month to a year from now. When it happens who’s to say what will happen with the player? Even if his relationship with the Oilers never spoils he may still be moved along elsewhere (somehow).
Taylor Hall is one of the longest serving Oilers on the team. He’s a driven player who stands to also play beside McDavid on the ice. The two of them have a lot in common and they developed some personal chemistry at the BioSteel camp. Despite the through the grapevine reputation that some of the young Oilers like Hall earned, I’m not overly concerned.
But even if I’m not that concerned about where McDavid is staying, you can bet the Oilers as an Organization are.
There is no way the team took this decision with this player lightly. Connor McDavid is the golden goose. He’s the most important rookie to enter the NHL in the last decade. I can assure you that placing him with Taylor Hall was not something that just happened without a little prior thought.
If anything, this kind of a decision reveals a lot about the way the organization views Taylor Hall. He is a leader on the team. He’s earned the right to wear the “A…. Now he’s being depended on to give McDavid a place to live, a place where he’ll learn what it takes to be an NHL player. It speaks volumes to the trust the Oilers have placed in Hall and the kind of person they believe him to be.
If I had to guess who has the inside track to be the next Captain of the Edmonton Oilers when Ference steps aside or leaves the club, it would be Taylor Hall based in part by this choice. That’s how strongly I believe that this decision was weighed by the organization.
Follow me on Twitter @Archaeologuy