Connor Ungar hasn't played an NHL game, but there's a decent chance he'll be called the future of the Edmonton Oilers before the first week of training camp is over.
That's the beauty of September. One preseason game against a split squad with a post-game interview where a young player sounds mature beyond his years gets the conversation going about whether the organization has found something it didn't even know it had.
Ungar is the safest bet because goaltending has dominated conversations in Edmonton for years. Nobody enjoys talking about backups and tandems when things are going well, but one strong night from a young goalie has a way of making everyone think five years into the future. Before long, somebody is wondering if he should stay with the club, somebody else is comparing him to Stuart Skinner's first camp, and the idea keeps growing until the next preseason game comes along.
Mike Babcock probably won't have much time before his turn arrives either. The first practice where he gets after a player, blows the whistle a little longer than expected or stops a drill to make a point will be dissected from every possible angle, not because anyone knows exactly what happened, but because everybody already has an opinion about him. Some people will watch the clip and see the demanding coach the Oilers wanted after another disappointing spring. Others will watch the exact same video and decide history is repeating itself. Training camp will give everyone new evidence for the argument they were already making.
There will also be a line that catches everyone's attention for a couple of exhibition games. Maybe it's because they spend the whole night on the forecheck. Maybe they score a pair of greasy goals. Maybe they simply play with more energy than everyone else on the ice. It doesn't really matter who the three players are because the conversation is almost always the same. Fans start talking about the fourth line as though it has finally been solved for good, even though coaches usually spend the first two months of the regular season moving those spots around.
The veterans don't escape much longer.
One rough exhibition game from Trent Frederick and somebody will decide nothing has changed. Evan Bouchard will miss the net on a power play, and people will question his contract... again. Connor Murphy will make one good enough defensive play, and there will be people wondering how Chicago ever let him get away. Every established player enters camp with headlines attached to him, and it rarely takes more than a period or two before someone decides they were proven right
Then there's the annual search for Connor McDavid's winger.
Somebody will practice beside McDavid, and the line combinations will get pencilled in for opening night. It doesn't matter that coaches use training camp to experiment or that preseason games are designed to answer questions rather than settle them. Once a player looks comfortable beside No. 97, people start imagining what eighty-two games might look like.
None of these conversations are particularly new, but that's part of what makes training camp entertaining. Fans are looking for reasons to believe the roster has improved, coaches are trying to learn something about their players, and somewhere in the middle, those two things become difficult to separate.
By the time the regular season begins, most of September's biggest storylines will have disappeared.
Connor Ungar might be in Bakersfield.
The fourth line probably won't look exactly the same.
A player who barely drew attention during camp will end up becoming one of the club's most important contributors.
That never seems to stop anyone from believing they've figured the whole team out before the leaves start changing.
