'It Felt Like We Couldn't Play Hockey': Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl Dish on the Early Adversity the Edmonton Oilers Faced This Season
Edmonton Oilers stars Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl made an appearance on the 32 Thoughts Podcast.
EDMONTON -- The Edmonton Oilers are nearing the end of the All-Star break. Just the other night Connor McDavid cleaned up at the Skills Competition - earning a $1-million prize in the process. Yesterday the festivities conclude with the 3-on-3 tournament - in which Team McDavid lost in the final to Team Matthews 7-4.
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Over the course of this break Leon Draisaitl and McDavid joined Elliotte Friedman and Jeff Marek on the 32 Thoughts podcast to talk about the beginning of the season for the Oilers.
At some point during the beginning of their season, panic began to set in with the team. The Oilers didn't leap out from the gate like most observers of hockey expected.
"Obviously it was a bad start, a lot of things that went wrong," was how McDavid opened the first question posed by Marek. He went on, "of course there was a sense of anxiety in the room."
Despite the panic and anxiety that would creep in there was a certain confidence in what the group could achieve. McDavid talked about what that was like from his perspective.
"There was always an underlying belief that was always there that was never shaken. Eventually we were going to get out of it, we just didn't want to dig ourselves too big of a hole."
"It felt like we were on some free fall and we couldn't catch ourselves."
Draisaitl chimed in with his trademark honesty and blunt demeanor, "when you are in a situation like that you go into every game you go 'okay this is the game where we're going to turn it around, this is the one' and we go out and just lay an absolute egg."
"I was just like, what is going on," like Draisaitl said here, it was confounding for both fans and the players.
"It felt like we couldn't play hockey anymore, it was crazy."
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Whatever was going on in the opening of the season, the team appears to be long past it. When you are a team that has won 16 games in a row - I think it's safe to say you've remembered how to play hockey.
The Oilers are back in action on Tuesday night against the Vegas Golden Knights, in Vegas.
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