Breaking: Preliminary update on Connor McDavid is a very good sign!

The Edmonton Oilers ended their season in catastrophic fashion on Saturday night in spite of the fact that they recorded a big, if insignificant, win over arguably their most bitter rivals, the Calgary Flames. That win however rang entirely hollow as all the concern in Edmonton was not on the outcome of the game but on the stats of Edmonton Oilers superstar forward and their captain Connor McDavid.

McDavid suffered a serious looking injury during the opening minutes of the games second period when he was hauled down by a trip that came courtesy of Calgary Flames veteran defenseman and captain Mark Gioradano. Although it did look like Giordano was trying to make a play on the puck at the time, he was never realistically in range of doing so and instead delivered a dangerous trip to McDavid that resulted in him smashing hard into the Calgary Flames net. 

Of course, as you would expect, reporters swarmed Flames captain Mark Giordano after the game in an effort to get a quote from him, and Giordano did not sound at all pleased with the way things had turned out.

"I feel terrible, again, I tried to obviously dive and get the puck and you never want to see, he's the best player in the game, so we need him in the game and tried to find out how he's doing out there and you're not going to get much from them, they're pretty mad about it and I understand that."

"I honestly thought I could get that puck and I dove for it, and watching the replay I missed it and stick sort of trips him. He’s obviously a great player and it was tough, I was trying to ask him right away. He was in a lot of pain there so he wasn’t saying much. Obviously with the result being what it is, if I had to do it all over again you’d almost want to see myself let him go and not injured him, but easy to say after the fact, so I’m going to ask around and hopefully get an answer and see if he’s doing alright."

"Hopefully it’s better than it looked because it looked like he wasn’t doing well there. Obviously my intention was to just get the puck. He’s a player, I’m not trying to do any dirty play on him and trying to play a one-on-one, really."

Although initially I would have said that fans in Edmonton are unlikely to forgive Giordano in spite of the fact that he genuinely seems to have remorse for his actions, Giordano may be getting a little extra help on that front. 

A new, if perhaps somewhat premature, report from TSN 1260's Jason Gregor has now revealed that McDavid may have avoided the worst of it. Gregor's report sounds overwhelmingly positive but I would caution fans to not get overly optimistic until the full results of the MRI have been made available.

"McDavid injury not considered serious," wrote Gregor. "They will wait for MRI confirmation, but as of now it looks promising."

Obviously this is the best news fans in Edmonton could have hoped for at this time.

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