Edmonton Oilers head coach Kris Knoblauch revealed on Saturday (May 2) that team captain Connor McDavid played with an injury during Edmonton’s first-round playoff series loss to the Anaheim Ducks.
McDavid and fellow Oilers centre Jason Dickinson “both had fractures around the foot-ankle area, playing through a lot of pain,” Knoblauch said while speaking to media during the team’s end-of-season news conference at Rogers Place.
“That was the two most significant injuries. They spent a lot of time with the training staff getting through that, but obviously it affected their play, but a lot of admiration for them wanting to be out there and contributing as much as they did during the playoffs.”
Anaheim defeated Edmonton 4-2 in the best-of-seven series. The Oilers’ season came to an end with a 5-2 loss at Honda Center in Game 6 on Thursday (April 30).
McDavid played in every game of the series, recording one goal and five assists. Dickinson suited up for four of the six games, totalling two goals and one assist.
While Knoblauch didn’t explicitly state it, all signs indicate that McDavid was injured during the second period of Game 2, when he got his right leg tied up with Oilers defenceman Mattias Ekholm. After the collision with Ekholm, Edmonton’s captain left the bench for a brief time before returning to action.
The Oilers, who had opened the series with a dramatic 4-3 victory, went on to lose Game 2 by a score of 6-4. That was the first of three straight wins for Anaheim, which built a 3-1 lead that would prove too much for the Oilers to come back from.
The revelation that McDavid played hurt helps explain what was a pretty poor series by his standards. The NHL’s regular-season points leader was held pointless in three of the six games, scored only once, and finished the series with a cumulative plus/minus of minus-8, setting a new record for lowest rating by a forward in a single series in Oilers postseason history.
While McDavid was still able to reach top speed on end-to-end rushes, he just didn’t seem right throughout the series, mentally as much as physically. He committed 13 turnovers in the series, which is only two fewer than he totalled over 23 games last postseason. The Oilers desperately needed one of McDavid’s signature Superman performances in this series, and they never got it.
Oilers fans were heartbroken when Edmonton was eliminated on Thursday. Expectations were extraordinarily high for a team that was the two-time defending Western Conference champions and had advanced to at least the second round in each of the last four postseasons, and there was a genuine belief in the Alberta capital that the Oilers were going to get the series back to Rogers Place for Game 7.
But news of McDavid’s injury puts everything in a new context. Even if they had somehow managed to overcome Anaheim and advance to the next round, it’s very difficult to envision how the Oilers would go much further with a wounded McDavid. Edmonton would have been hard-pressed to get past the red-hot Vegas Golden Knights in Round 2.
While all the focus is on McDavid’s health, the injury to Dickinson can’t be overlooked. The veteran centre, whom the Oilers acquired from the Chicago Blackhawks just prior to the trade deadline, was the first star in Edmonton’s Game 1 victory when he scored a pair of goals. Dickinson then sat out Games 2 and 3 before returning to play the rest of the series, but he obviously wasn’t 100%.
Dickinson is believed to have been injured on April 8, when he blocked a shot against the San Jose Sharks. He exited that game and subsequently sat out Edmonton’s final three contests of the regular season before returning for Game 1 against Anaheim.
The soon-to-be 31-year-old Dickinson may never play another shift for the Oilers; he becomes a free agent on July 1 and can sign with any of the NHL’s other 31 clubs. McDavid, meanwhile, will have his longest offseason in years, giving him plenty of time to heal up for the 2026-27 NHL season.
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