McDavid puts on a show in win over Storm
By Tony Saxon, Guelph Mercury
Connor McDavid has – by his lofty standards – been held in check pretty well by the Guelph Storm over the years.
The Erie Otters superstar came into Wednesday’s game at Erie Insurance Arena averaging a point a game over three seasons against Guelph, never having scored more than two points in a single game.
That all changed Wednesday.
McDavid was simply brilliant, scoring four goals and adding two assists as the Otters downed the storm 8-4 in the final meeting of the regular season between the two teams.
And there were some beauties in the four: beating defencemen one-on-one on three different occasions before scoring.
“I was pretty impressed with Connor tonight,” said Storm coach Bill Stewart. “I thought that when it was 5-4 he took the game into his own hands.”
Three of McDavid’s points came in the final period, two of them goals.
“I feel like I play okay against Guelph … they’re a good team and they play good defence,” said McDavid, downplaying any notion of it being a breakout game.
Stewart thought that McDavid might have had added motivation against Guelph because of a melee that started after the final buzzer when these two teams played in Guelph last week, a melee Stewart said his team initiated.
“Great players like him do not forget about those things,” the Storm coach said, calling his team’s post-game behaviour a week ago “disrespectful.”
“Guys of that caliber don’t forget anything and I think he made a statement tonight,” Stewart said.
McDavid dominated the third period as the Storm made it a 5-4 game with a pair of goals 20 seconds apart early in the final frame. The Otters star had two goals and an assist in the third as Erie pulled away in the final 11 minutes.
Suspension and injury left the Storm with just five healthy defencemen and that included newcomer Brock Philips, playing just his second OHL game. That forced them to employ veteran centre Jason Dickinson as a defenceman.
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