Edmonton Oilers captain Connor McDavid injured just before playoffs

McDavid has had his fair share of injuries in his young career, most notably the high profile PCL tear he suffered against the Calgary Flames at the end of the 2018-2019 season and a broken collarbone which derailed what was an outstanding rookie season. Both of those injuries forced him to miss significant time. More recently, at the start of this season, McDavid was out for a few weeks due to an unspecified upper-body injury that was magnified by the Oilers' early season struggles.

Today, McDavid was a surprising absentee from practice before Oilers head coach Kris Knoblauch confirmed an injury. Knoblauch told the media on Tuesday that McDavid is day-to-day with a lower-body injury. According to many Oilers reporters, the injury occurred in Saturday's game against the Calgary Flames with less than five minutes to play. You can see in the video here that he engaged in a board battle and looked to twist his lower body in an awkward way. That was his final shift of the game, but the Oilers held on for a 4-2 victory.

Knoblauch noted that while McDavid is day-to-day, he isn't necessarily ruled out for tomorrow's game against the Vegas Golden Knights, instead saying that McDavid is «questionable». With the Oilers securely locked into a playoff spot, it would make zero sense for him to play tomorrow. The Oilers have five games remaining and would prefer to have a healthy McDavid (who wouldn't?) heading into the playoffs instead of letting him chase down Nikita Kucherov and Nathan MacKinnon for the NHL's scoring title.

McDavid sits 6 points back of Kucherov and 3 back of MacKinnon and also sits just one assist shy of 100 on the season. Should he return and reach the mark, he would be the first player since Wayne Gretzky to reach 100+ assists since the 1990-1991 season. I know that's what everyone wants, but a healthy McDavid has to be the priority heading into the playoffs.