Maple Leafs defenceman Chris Tanev’s level of respect for Connor McDavid reached a high bar well before the latter played his first game in the National Hockey League.
Now that McDavid has become the fourth-fastest player in NHL history to record 1,000 points, Tanev’s admiration has spiked another notch.
“Insane,” Tanev said after Leafs practice on Friday at the Ford Performance Centre. “Crazy to do it in the first place and then to do it as fast as he did is an amazing accomplishment.
“When you look at the names in there, they are the best of the best. He’s been doing it for a long time now and he’s still pretty young.”
When the 27-year-old McDavid scored in the Edmonton Oilers’ 3-2 overtime win against the Nashville Predators (later setting up Darnell Nurse for the winner), he recorded his 1,000th point in his 659th NHL game.
Only Wayne Gretzky (424 games), Mario Lemieux (513) and Mike Bossy (656) required fewer games to hit the milestone.
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Tanev goes back with McDavid quite a few years. With numerous other NHL players, they’ve long been clients of Gary Roberts, working out with the ex-NHLer at his gym for weeks every summer.
“He was pretty mature as a 16-year-old, and you have to be if you’re going to be in that spotlight and to be able to handle everything that’s going on around you,” Tanev said of McDavid. “When he was 16, he’s probably acting like a 30-year-old. It feels like he has been mature beyond his years for a long time.”
What McDavid does between whistles is rather relevant as the Leafs will play host to No. 97 and the rest of the Oilers on Saturday night at Scotiabank Arena. The Leafs won’t have captain Auston Matthews as he continues to recover from an upper-body injury, so fans in the building and anyone watching on TV, unfortunately, won’t see two of the top players in the game pitted against each other.
McDavid, as he has done more often than not in the NHL, can put on a show by himself.
He has been doing that more lately, piling up nine points in his past three games after recording just 10 in his first 11 games of 2024-25.
“When he’s on the ice, everybody has to pay attention,” Leafs coach Craig Berube said. “You have to take time and space away from him the best you can and deny him the puck as much as you can. He’ll be tough to handle.”
Berube played in 1,054 games in an NHL career that came to close in 2002-03 and had a total of 159 points. McDavid’s career high for one season is 153, accomplished two years ago.
Berube marvelled at McDavid’s quick jaunt to 1,000 points for a couple of reasons.
“You look at today’s game and how fast it is, and the structure of the game, how teams play defence,” Berube said. “I’m not taking anything away from the great players that did it before him, and they could probably come in today’s game and dominate still, but it’s very impressive.
“I’ve coached against him for a while now, and he’s just incredible with the speed and the agility he has and the control with the puck at that speed.”
Leafs goalie Anthony Stolarz, expected start against the Oilers, had a brief glimpse of that as a teammate of McDavid during the 2018-19 season. Stolarz played in six games with Edmonton after he was acquired from the Philadelphia Flyers, before signing with Anaheim in free agency in the summer of 2019.
Earlier in the ’18-’19 season, McDavid banked the puck into the net off Stolarz during a game between the Oilers and Flyers.
“We’ll try to avoid that (Saturday),” Stolarz said with a smile. “It just goes to show you his hockey IQ and the way he thinks the game.
“You can really never take a second off when he has the puck because he’s capable of doing things like that.”
Similar to Tanev, Leafs centre John Tavares had an early glimpse at McDavid.
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In the summer of 2012, when McDavid was 15 and about to start his junior career with the Erie Otters of the Ontario Hockey League, Tavares coached him in a mentorship camp in Mississauga run by the NHL Players’ Association.
“I remember being young and following Sid (Crosby) through his junior career, and the anticipation of him coming to the NHL was very high, but it almost felt like it was at a different level for Connor,” Tavares said.
“When I was around him at that time, you could sense all the attention. I don’t want to say he was uncomfortable, but it was a lot for a teenager and a kid.
“He just wanted to play hockey, and loves to play. Now there’s a real sense of himself and how he carries himself on a daily basis, how he deals with the media, deals with being in the public eye all the time. He’s found a pretty good balance.
“When he does season to season, all that he has on his plate, it’s not easy, but it’s impressive what he does.”
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