Connor McDavid, a hockey superstar and resident of a planet far away from Earth, went full savage mode on the Eastern Conference-leading Tampa Bay Lightning Monday in a career night for No. 97.McDavid recorded his first NHL four-goal night, third career hat trick, and second ever five-point game in an Oilers 6-2 victory. He absolutely torched the Lightning after Tampa came into the matchup as the only team able to hold McDavid scoreless in his career. That changed in a damn hurry, as the Oilers captain went full cheat-code and made a speedy Lightning squad look slow as hell during his electrifying night.This goal, in particular, proves that McDavid may be an otherworldly being invading us from a far-away hockey-playing planet where shit like this is normal. It's certainly not normal here.
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It was a very good night for the kid's wallet, too, as McDavid racked up $415K in performance bonuses, tallying his 20th goal and 60th point of the season—each worth around $213,000. With his current goal, assist, and point totals, and another appearance in the All-Star Game last month, McDavid has hit his maximum $850K in bonuses, according to Cap Friendly, with a third of the season still left.With eight points in his last three games, the 21-year-old has climbed his way back into the Art Ross Trophy race and is flirting with another 100-point season. On Monday night alone, McDavid started the evening tied for 13th in NHL scoring, but climbed to third overall with 61 points and sits just five back of Nikita Kucherov for the league lead.
Aside from the eye-test, which McDavid passes so beautifully every damn night, he's putting up the numbers, too. His 3.59 game score per 60 is good for third best in the NHL, while his 27 primary points rank fifth league-wide. He also leads the Oilers in all major advanced categories including Corsi% (54.87) and relative GF% (15.88), according to Corsica, while being involved in over 43 percent of Edmonton's total goals this season.How a team can have this type of out-of-this-world talent and production in McDavid and still manage to miss the playoffs in a league where half the clubs qualify for the postseason is truly a mind-blowing feat, but the Oilers, in all likelihood, have somehow figured out how to do just that.To put it lightly, Edmonton has been an absolute dumpster fire this season after breaking a 10-year playoff drought in 2016-17 on the back of McDavid's MVP campaign. Peter Chiarelli and the management group has failed miserably in building a team around their captain in the last year of his entry-level contract, and has the Oilers sitting in a terrible spot as a result. The team's historically putrid penalty kill, no secondary scoring, mediocre goaltending, and a lack of talent on the wing, particularly alongside No. 97, have plagued the Oilers and have them once again in the hunt for a high draft pick as they currently sit third-last in the Pacific and 11 points out of the final wild-card spot in the West.Let's just rename this squad the Edmonton McDavids and get it over with.