OAKVILLE

Tom Fergus’ cellphone rang late Sunday afternoon.

It was his wife, Judy, asking a question so many hockey moms ask in their own way, about their own child.

“How did T.J. play?”

Fergus paused a moment before talking about his son, a defenceman with the Eric Otters.

“I don’t know,” the ex-Leaf told his wife. “I was too busy watching Connor McDavid.”

About 30 minutes earlier, McDavid turned on the speed in the neutral zone.

Lifelong hockey man Sherry Bassin turned and shouted: “Say goodnight!”

McDavid was just crossing the blue line with the puck. The rush didn’t seem like anything out of the ordinary — and then it became extraordinary.

McDavid scored.

“See, told ya!” yelled Bassin who, as general manager of the Otters, is surrogate grandfather to the budding superstar.

“I’ve never been a person short of words, but he does things I don’t know how to describe. You think, ‘How is this possible?’ And then he goes out and does it again.”

This is the beginning of Connor McDavid’s draft year, the last year of junior for a player Bassin and so many others are calling “generational.”

He has been famous since he was 15, been on the covers of magazines and newspapers, has learned what it is to be a public figure at 17.

“He does something different every night,” said Fergus, who played 726 NHL games. “And, boy, can he skate. I used to talk about guys who can turn on a dime. They need a coin for this kid. I’ve been around the game a long time. I’ve never seen anyone skate like this before.”

Skating. Speed. Hands. Shot. Vision. Size. Toughness. Creativity. Competitiveness.

“Most great players have some of those qualities,” said Jay McKee, the former NHL defenceman who is on the Erie coaching staff. “Connor has all of them. He has the highest level of skill in every single category.”

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McDavid knows he can play the game.

But learning to be famous? That’s been another matter entirely.

“It’s pretty weird,” he said, sounding his age for a moment. “It’s something that takes getting used to. I understand the expectations. I understand what’s said about me. The outside pressure, it doesn’t really bother me a lot.

“It’s not always fun having expectations on you all the time. People put that on you. It’s something I’ve been dealing with for a long time now.

“At first, I had a lot of trouble with it (inside). I didn’t like it. I had to learn. I’m not feeling that now. I think I’ve come to understand how to handle it. My dad’s helped me a lot. He’s taught me everything I know about hockey.”

Well, that’s not entirely accurate. There are parts of McDavid’s game at this young age — already 6-foot-1, 195 pounds, looking in every way the part of an NHL centre — that defy explanation.

In the pre-season game on Sunday against the Mississauga Steelheads, McDavid scored once and set up four other goals. Had his linemates been older or more seasoned — a number of Erie players are at NHL rookie camps — he might have had eight points instead of five.

When the game was over, Mississauga coach James Boyd referred to him as “the best player on the planet.”

That might be a stretch. But not for long.

When you watch McDavid, he can do things that seem right out of this or any other world. On one goal on Sunday, he stickhandled between two defencemen on the left side of the ice, held the puck, pivoted, skated back toward the wide side of the ice, was chased by two players, and then feathered a cross-ice pass to a wide-open player beside the crease, who scored easily. It was one of those how-did-he-do-that moments.

“Every night, he does something you haven’t seen before,” said Fergus. “Every night, there’s a play you go home talking about.”

“I don’t know how to describe what he does,” said Jeff Jackson, the former Leafs executive who works for the Orr Hockey Group — the Orr being Bobby Orr.

“You see it, you can’t believe it, but it happens.”

Bassin talks about a best-selling book called The Two-Second Advantage.

“It’s a book about people who see things before they happen,” said Bassin. “Good corporate presidents don’t wait for a problem to happen. They foresee them. They prevent them. Well, I think they’re going to have to write another chapter for their book and put Connor in it.

“He has that two-second advantage. He sees what’s going on two seconds before anyone else does. If you’re open, you’ll get the puck, because he’ll find you at the highest speed, with his feet moving. He just does things other people aren’t capable of. And his burst, his first few steps, are like a 100-metre sprinter coming out of the blocks.”

There is some debate whether McDavid or American Jack Eichel will be the first pick in a very strong 2014 NHL draft. But having watched McDavid grow and develop over the past four years, it’s hard to imagine anyone better-suited to take on the NHL challenge as next franchise player.

In his quiet, humble, aw-shucks kind of hockey way, McDavid relishes the challenge.

His plan for the year: Win a world junior title. Win a Memorial Cup. Get drafted first overall in June. All this with confidence, almost bravado.

“I care if I’m No. 1,” McDavid said Sunday. “I want to be No. 1. It’s important to me. It’s not that I want to beat (Eichel). I want to be No. 1 whether it’s Jack Eichel or Noah Hanifin or Dylan Strome or whomever (he’s up against). It’s not personal. I want to be the best and prove I deserve to be the No. 1 pick.

“I don’t care what team drafts me. That’s not important to me. You hear about all these guys who care where they’re drafted — you see that a lot in the OHL — but that really grinds my gears. It almost gives me the impression they’re better than the league. I’ll go where I’m drafted. And you make the best out whatever situation that is. It’s the NHL ... there’s no second-class organizations.”

The numbers say something magical about McDavid in a hockey kind of way. In his first junior season, he scored 66 points — matching Mario Lemieux’s jersey number. In his second junior season, he scored 99 points — matching Wayne Gretzky’s jersey number. Now this is Year 3: The number, likely somewhere in the 100s, will be his own.

“In my career, at my age, this is a real gift for me,” said the 75-year-old Bassin, who has been around junior hockey forever. “I knew when we drafted him he was good. Everybody knew that. But this good? I don’t think anyone counted for that. I always say to my players, ‘Do I love who I am when I’m around you?’ Do I ever love who I am when I’m around Connor McDavid.

“I like to study human behaviour and I love this kid’s behaviour. He’s driven from the inside, quiet, humble, serious, but he’s still a kid. But he’s focused on everything that’s important. He’s taking online courses and he had a 92 average first semester last year. Everything he does, he does seriously.

“If he played in the NHL this season, I believe he’d get 70 points. Whoever gets him, they’re getting something special, someone special. I don’t advocate tanking, especially with the new rules, but (if I was an NHL team), I’d want to do everything I could to get this kid.”