Rookie Connor McDavid scores 22 seconds in vs. Sabres

Centre Connor McDavid was named the NHL’s top rookie for the month of February on Tuesday.

“He’s a big-time player”, Oilers head coach Todd McLellan said.

Jakub Nakladal’s first career goal was the only score for the Flames, who dropped their sixth straight.

This was the first time McDavid and Eichel faced each other in the NHL; McDavid missed the first game between the Oilers and Sabres on December 6, a 4-2 Oilers win, because of a fractured clavicle. “They are both generational players, but they each still have some work to do”. The finishing sequence appropriately featured both rookie sensations. Jordan Eberle tipped the puck back to McDavid on the left side of the crease, where he faked a wrist shot and slid to his right to tap a backhand behind a sprawling Lehner, drawing boos from the sellout crowd at First Niagara Center. “I don’t look at him as an enemy or a rival or anything like that”.

It was McDavid’s second goal of the game.

The second period featured more up-tempo hockey, but no goals.

Both agree they aren’t best friends, but immediately claim they haven’t spent all that much time together. He missed a few months of the season with a broken collarbone that he suffered only a few weeks into the season. Eichel has scored one goal in the last 14 contests and he doesn’t have a point in the past five. He was slightly below 50% possession on the night, but he also saved a sure goal by sweeping it out of the crease in the first, and he displayed good positioning, physicality and an ability to quickly make simple plays with the puck.

“It’s another game”, Eichel said. “It started with the way we came out”. Not the best, but certainly not the worst, I suppose.

But Eichel, who was not on the ice for the goal, did his part in helping the Sabres keep McDavid in check.

With McDavid playing his junior hockey just a 70 minute drive away in Erie, Pa., the future was nearly close enough to high-five for Sabres Nation.

These two teams will never meet each other enough.

Having said that, Hall did admit there was one moment involving Seguin during their first National Hockey League seasons that really irked him. “The draft placed them in this position as rivals, but we are clearly not to that point yet. It shows the see-saw game, it’s disappointing”, Sabres coach Dan Bylsma said.

A costly too many men on the ice penalty in the third period led to a Boston power play goal by Patrice Bergeron that made the difference in the Flames’ sixth loss in a row, 2-1, in Boston.

Ottawa goaltender Craig Anderson made 28 saves on 31 shots before leaving the game at 13 minutes, 41 seconds in the second period. “Short-lived here, obviously, not getting the win”.

In the respective dressing rooms, teammates were saying something else – that they knew that their top draftees were driven on this night, beyond any other, to succeed.

“I think good players are just able to rise to the occasion”, Eberle said. “Obviously scoring in your first shift and then ending it … it’s a [heck] of a storybook ending”.

NOTES: LW Patrick Maroon, LW Luke Gazdic, LW Benoit Pouliot and D Nikita Nikitin were scratched for the Oilers. Winger Patrick Maroon, who was acquired from Anaheim in a trade, is travelling today and should be in the lineup Thursday in Philadelphia. D Cody Franson was scratched for the Sabres….