The Connor McDavid train has run off the rails, both in terms of the hype the electrifying first-year pro has received thus far into the 2015 NHL season and in terms of his injury Tuesday night against the Philadelphia Flyers. It's an injury that, according to Oilers head coach Todd McLellan, will keep the rising star out of the Edmonton lineup for the "long-term," and per ESPN's Craig Custance, resulted in a broken clavicle.
UPDATE, 1:15 P.M.: Oilers GM Peter Chiarelli confirmed the diagnosis and indicated that McDavid will be out for "months."
"He's disappointed he got injured," McLellan said shortly after the Flyers game. "It's his rookie year. Things are going really well and he wants to be part of the group, which he still will be but he's just not going to wear the uniform for a little while."
McLellan, as is the NHL's backwards custom, only revealed that McDavid was dealing with an "upper body injury" as part of his poast-game press conference. If it is indeed a broken clavicle, it's likely that the neophyte NHLer will be watching from the press box for at least a couple of months, if not more. As Jared Clinton of The Hockey News notes, Chicago Blackhawks star Patrick Kane suffered a similar injury in Feb. 2015 and wound up missing seven weeks after surgery. The initial projected timetable for Kane's return was 12 weeks.
If McDavid's injury is similar to Kane's, he may require surgery, though the severity of the supposed fracture is, of course, not yet known.
For the Oilers, this wasn't a season in which they expected to reach the playoffs anyway, but the growing list of injuries to important Edmonton pieces - McDavid joins a list of injured Oilers that includes Jordan Eberle, Justin Schultz, Rob Klinkhammer, Griffin Reinhart and Lauri Korpikoski - that has, at this point, become almost comical.
