Dave Isaac

@davegisaac

EDMONTON, Alberta — Sam Gagner was going through his normal routine, a mid-summer skate in his hometown of Oakville, Ontario in 2011, when the kid first joined him on the ice.

Gagner, the Edmonton Oilers’ sixth-overall pick in 2007, had just gotten done working with his trainer, Dan Ninkovitch, who asked if a 14 year old could join him on the ice.

Gagner wasn’t sure of the kid’s name. Something Irish. Maybe O’Connor?

Nope, the AAA midget player was Connor McDavid, hockey’s newest phenom that no one had heard of yet.

“He came on with me and it was crazy how good he was at that age,” Gagner said. “Now we have the same agent so we’ve stayed in touch a little bit. He was special then. He would ask questions and he took a real business-like approach to getting better at that age, which not many 14 year olds do. It’s usually just you’re out there to have fun. It was pretty cool to see.”

Fast forward a few years and Gagner is with the Flyers, not teammates with McDavid, whom the Oilers selected first overall in June’s draft.

Now that little shrimp following Gagner all over the Oakville Ice Sports rink is thought to be Sidney Crosby good. Maybe even Wayne Gretzky good.

The two have stayed in touch ever since.

“I know Sam really well,” McDavid said with a smile. “I was skating with him when I was younger and met him through there. His dad’s now with my agency, so we’re (represented by) the same agency. I know him a little bit.

“He’s been great. He’s answered just about any question I’ve ever had for him. He’s probably a little bit annoyed with my questions, but he’s been great.”

Hardly.

Gagner loves having McDavid look up to him and was happy to give some pointers on playing in Edmonton, where the expectations are sky high for McDavid.

“I told him he should just be excited,” Gagner said. “It’s actually a really good place to play, regardless of reputation or the way things have gone the last number of years. I enjoyed it there and I basically told him the same thing – that he would too.”

After scoring a point per game in October, McDavid was named the league’s rookie of the month. He says his season so far is “up-and-down,” but with five goals and seven assists, he’s been just about everything that’s been expected of him.

“That’s something that you’ve just got to deal with,” the soft-spoken teenager said of the pressure surrounding him. “There’s nothing I can do about that. There’s no secret to dealing with it or anything like that. You’ve just kind of accept it and learn to live with it.”

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‘A different stratosphere’

Since Gagner is in Philadelphia and McDavid is nearly 4,000 miles away in Edmonton, the rookie has sought advice from others. The Oilers have plenty of first-round picks like Gagner and McDavid that were supposed to be the answer.

Taylor Hall is no slouch. The first-overall pick the year before McDavid met Gagner has been nearly a point per game player over his career. When McDavid first got to Edmonton, the two lived together.

Hall knows about the pressure McDavid is dealing with.

Kind of.

“It’s in a different stratosphere than me,” Hall said. “There’s a whole lot more going on with him. He’s handling it really well and I think he’s enjoying it.”

Through a month of the season, the two are still close. Hall, 23, and McDavid, 18, do what “normal kids” do.

“Play video games and watch hockey, watch football, make dinners, stuff like that,” Hall said. “It’s getting to the winter days here in Edmonton, so there’s not a lot of outdoor activities. We just kind of hang out.”

McDavid isn’t exactly living a normal 18 year old’s life these days, but he wouldn’t trade that life for his now. He loves playing hockey even if he’s still getting comfortable with being in the spotlight. He’s extremely grounded for all the attention he’s getting.

“It’s just the way you’re brought up,” the Richmond Hill, Ontario native said. “I don’t think there’s any need to be that cocky guy. There’s no need for that. That’s just the way I was brought up in a fairly small Canadian town. That’s just the way it is.”

Following a phenom

The expectations on Gagner were big in Edmonton. When he signed a three-year, $14.4 million extension in the summer of 2013, they got even bigger.

He was expected to put up big points with a bigger salary-cap hit and had a career-low 37 that year. He was then traded to Tampa then flipped to Arizona the next summer.

None of the many Oilers high first-round picks — Hall, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Nail Yakupov were all selected first overall in three consecutive years — have been able to be the single savior.

If anyone can be that guy, it might be McDavid.

“He’s gonna be special,” Gagner said. “He’s got a lot of gifts that you can’t really teach. He seems to pick up speed while he’s gliding, which is impossible to do. I think the biggest thing is he continues to work and he’s really humble. I’m looking forward to watching him play and I’m pulling for him. Hopefully things go great for him.”

Gagner feels a little closer to McDavid, having followed him from such a young age, but he’s seen a couple others, too.

“There’s a number of guys,” Gagner said. “I remember actually I coached this all-state Canadians team with (New York Islanders captain John) Tavares and (Flyers 2015 first-round pick Travis) Konecny was in the game. It’s like funny to see him then and see him now. The kids coming up are good. They have skill development from a young age so they’re coming. They’re good players. It’s fun to see.”

McDavid is expected to be the best of the bunch.

Dave Isaac; (856) 486-2479;disaac@gannettnj.com.