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To see Connor McDavid tied with Pavel Bure as the fastest player to reach 40 goals (both in 48 games) in roughly 25 years, it seems fitting because both are breakaway machines.
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Nobody got in behind people like Bure, who almost seemed to be running on his skates, back in his heyday.
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On Saturday, McDavid sliced into the clear in ho-hum fashion, taking Zach Hyman’s perfect feed to beat Vancouver’s Spencer Martin 86 seconds into the game, a 4-2 win by the Oilers.
Bure, now 51, had 40 goals in his first 48 games for Florida in 1999-2000. He wound up with 58 goals in 74 games that season. McDavid has 40 in the same 48 today. His career best is 44, to put this run in perspective. Maybe No. 97 blows by 50 and gets 60 goals with 34 games left.
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Until McDavid’s 40th in the 48th Oilers game, Auston Matthews’ 40 in 49 was the fastest since Bure did it. “He’s a pass-first guy but he’s shooting more (200 shots, one of only five NHLers with that),” said Hyman. “It’s a credit to Connor. He’s worked at it, at being a goal-scorer.”
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This month, McDavid has 55 shots in 10 games. Two games with eight shots (Vegas and Anaheim), seven against the Canucks Saturday, six against Tampa Bay and Seattle.
“I never saw Pavel Bure up close, but his speed was a huge factor to him scoring goals and dominating the way he did,” Oilers head coach Jay Woodcroft said. “Connor’s his own unique player. He’s a player of a generation. What we’re seeing is special.”
SCORCHED EARTH
Jim Rutherford, the Vancouver Canucks team president, is entitled to hire and fire whomever he wants, but this dysfunctional organization’s treatment of ousted coach Bruce Boudreau was obviously shameful, also embarrassing — leaving him dangling for weeks before Rick Tocchet, as everybody expected, was brought in Sunday.
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It’s a stain on an otherwise exemplary NHL management career for Rutherford, a Hall of Famer in the builder category, who knows better from the GM playbook of letting coaches go. Rutherford, who didn’t bring Boudreau to Vancouver — owner Francesco Aquilini did — left Boudreau hanging and having to answer questions about his fate for weeks. Rutherford knows better and says he will apologize to Boudreau. So he knows he did wrong.
The callous organization needs to hire a crisis management company with this fall-out with Tocchet now the sixth coach in Vancouver in the last 10 years. Alain Vigneault, John Tortorella, Willie Desjardins, Travis Green and Boudreau came before him.
That said, Tocchet is a good coach, a players’ coach, with previous stops in Arizona and Tampa Bay as head man and Pittsburgh as an assistant with Cup rings there. He knows his stuff, but he has his hands full in Vancouver. Bringing aboard former NHL defencemen Adam Foote and Sergei Gonchar to his staff is a strong move, though, because the Vancouver back-end, to put it politely, is a hot mess apart from Quinn Hughes’ puck-moving, Luke Schenn’s fibre, and Ethan Bear’s good play after coming in from Carolina.
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If Boudreau is looking for work, he can maybe replace Tocchet on the TNT studio panel, right away.
Meanwhile, the Canucks, in damage control mode, tweeted out a photo of Boudreau in Canucks gear with a big Thank You and a “your dedication and passion for the game have created a lasting impact on the Vancouver Canucks and our community.”
Lasting? Lasted only 103 games as Canucks’ coach.
DIDN’T YOU USED TO BE?
Oilers goalie Mike Smith, currently living in the Okanagan, dropped by Rogers Arena on Saturday night with his kids to say hello to his teammates. Smith gutted it out last season on a very bad ankle to play every playoff game, then came to camp in the fall and failed his physical.
Turning 41 in a few months, he’s on long-term injury, doing family stuff and getting his $2.2 million for the last season of his contract before he officially retires. For now, he’s doing a lot of dad time. He hasn’t hooked up with the junior team in Kelowna or anybody else to, say, coach or advise.
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“I heard Smitty was coming in to watch the game and was doing my best to puck-handle,” Oilers goalie Stuart Skinner said with a laugh. Skinner got the win on Saturday. “I don’t know if I did a good enough job to his standards, but it was OK.”
Smith was acrobatic in the net, as we all know. Skinner also showed some of that, as he dove across the crease to rob Lane Pederson on Saturday. “Yeah, the 2-on-1. You have to do everything you can to make a save,” said Skinner.
ANOTHER NAME FROM PAST IS GONE
John Blackwell, a significant piece of Oilers history, passed away this week in Tucson. Blackwell started as a trainer with Oilers in the WHA, then detoured into player ops. He spent 18 years with the Oilers, getting his name on the 1990 Stanley Cup, before he was hired away by the Philadelphia Flyers to be the team’s assistant GM for a decade under Russ Farwell and then Bobby Clarke.
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Blackwell, always a behind-the-scenes guy who never craved attention, left the trainer business and developed the Oilers’ computerized scouting system on players in the 1980s for GM Glen Sather after the individual scouts had filed written reports. The Oilers were one of the first teams to do so.
THIS ‘N’ THAT
The Oilers haven’t started negotiations with winger Klim Kostin on an extension, figuring there’s no hurry for the restricted free-agent who has nine goals since the trade with St. Louis. Best guess scenario: He is offered a two-year deal, maybe in the $1.25 million range after making $750,000 right now … When Evander Kane of the Oilers and Tampa Bay’s Nikita Kucherov fell late in the first period on Thursday, Leduc’s NHL linesman Travis Toomey took a bad cut at the base of his left thumb when his hand came in contact with Kucherov’s skate blade after he got tripped up. The former U of Alberta Golden Bears player needed about a dozen stitches and didn’t return … Leon Draisaitl’s goal Saturday gave him a 17-game point streak against the Canucks. Only two other Oilers have had a longer streak. Mark Messier had one of 18 games, and Wayne Gretzky 20 and 29 games … John MacDonald, who expertly looked after things in the media lounge for years at Rexall Place, has died after a long cancer battle … Oilers forward Devin Shore, who has played two games in Bakersfield, is wearing No. 94 in his conditioning stint there. He played with Noah Philp and Seth Griffith against Tucson on Saturday. He still counts against the NHL team’s salary cap, even though he’s in the AHL. He last played in the minors in the 2015-2016 season as a Dallas farmhand … On the farm, Raphael Lavoie has 12 points in his last 13 games.
MATHESON: The key to being fast to 40 goals? Being fast - Edmonton Sun
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