Connor McDavid gave Oilers fans a quick offseason jolt this week, and it came in the form of a short training clip that did exactly what these things are supposed to do: remind everyone just how ridiculous he looks when he’s skating.
A seven-second snippet from Gary Roberts Performance went viral on social media after the facility posted a montage of some of its best-known players working on the ice. McDavid was front and center in the clip, and, unsurprisingly, he looked like Connor McDavid doing Connor McDavid things.
He wasn’t the only familiar name in the building, either. Leon Draisaitl and Zach Hyman have also been training there this summer, along with other NHLers such as Chris Tanev, Shane Wright, and several others.
Gary Roberts Performance has long been one of the league’s most recognizable training spots, and McDavid’s connection to it runs deep. He’s been working out there near his childhood home since he was 15 years old.
Roberts recently talked on the Clearing the Crease podcast about how quickly elite players can lose ground if they’re not careful.
“Within two or three weeks, guys are back in the gym,” said Gary Roberts on a recent appearance on the Clearing the Crease podcast. He was talking about how quickly elite athletes can get out of shape if they aren’t careful.
“You literally don’t want to get out of shape…If you go and have lots of fun for a week or two weeks, you’re starting to get out of shape. Aerobically, I think you get out of shape quickly, like 72 hours.”
McDavid’s offseason work has been a talking point for years, with plenty of people noting how little time he seems to spend away from the rink. Roberts has seen that commitment up close, especially during one of the most important stretches of McDavid’s career.
That came after McDavid suffered a major left knee injury in the final regular-season game of 2018-19. He missed no games, even though he had torn his PCL and other ligaments and cracked his tibia.
The injury left him with a difficult choice: undergo surgery and face a recovery that would have kept him out for 10 months, or take the more unconventional path of intense rehab and physiotherapy.
In the Sportsnet documentary Connor McDavid: Whatever It Takes, Roberts addressed the recovery and the level of dedication it required.
“No one has done what Connor has done to rehabilitate himself back from a serious knee injury in that period of time.”
That history is part of why the recent clip landed the way it did. Roberts knows what McDavid puts into his preparation, and this summer gives McDavid and the Oilers a chance to breathe, reset, and train after a long run.
It also marks the club’s longest offseason since 2021, something Roberts said people tend to underestimate after back-to-back trips to the Stanley Cup final and another playoff run on top of that.
“I think people totally underestimate the wear and tear on the body when you go to the Stanley Cup final two years in a row and to top it off, you don’t win,” said Roberts on Clearing the Crease.
“And now you’re back in the playoffs again with basically two summers of basically just staying even, I call it. You’re not making gains - you’re trying to get healthy to go back to training camp. I think people underestimate just how hard it is on the body to play that long, year after year, and try to repeat it, especially in today’s game.”
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