Connor McDavid's Injury a Big Blow for NHL: Star Rookie's Ascension Derailed

The impact of an injury to an 18-year-old in the National Hockey League doesn't usually extend much beyond a single franchise.

But Connor McDavid is no ordinary player. Already the face of the Edmonton Oilers organization after being selected first overall in last June's draft, McDavid was fast-tracking as the eventual successor to Sidney Crosby as the league's brightest star.

He signed his first sponsorship deal with Reebok when he was 15 and inked his first as an NHLer with CCM Hockey in the spring, weeks before he was drafted. He is expected to make more annually in advertising than his base salary pays him.

Just a dozen games into his NHL career, McDavid was proving to be worthy of all the hype, already living up to the title of the NHL's next generational player. He was producing at a point per game, with five goals and 12 points through those first dozen, leading the early race for the Calder Trophy and doing it as the youngest of the bunch.

Then came Game 13, unlucky to say the least.

Using his speed to drive to the net during Tuesday's game against the Philadelphia Flyers, McDavid crashed heavily and awkwardly into the end boards with a pair of Philadelphia Flyers defenders on top of him. The result was bad. Bad for the Oilers. Bad for the NHL.

"He's got an upper-body injury that's going to keep him out long term," Oilers head coach Todd McLellan said of October's Rookie of the Month during a postgame conference on Sportsnet's broadcast.

At the time, the kid with all the skills necessary to tear up the league as a teenager was still being evaluated by trainers and doctors. More news will come via general manager Peter Chiarelli on Wednesday morning.

But the somber McLellan knew enough already to share this wasn't going to be a quick fix.

"I can tell you it's going to be long term—he'll be out for a while."

There are those words again. Long term. Not what you want to hear about a player who was getting casual sports fans to tune in to the highlights on TV or even consider buying a ticket to see this McDavid kid play live in their city. The Toronto Sun's Steve Simmons shared that same sentiment ON Twitter:

Long term had a more definitive timeline a couple of hours after the game ended, with Edmonton Sun reporter Terry Jones among those to tweet out that a broken clavicle would keep the superstar-in-the-making grounded until after Christmas at best.

The impact in Edmonton is immediate and devastating. Despite the presence of a handful of top draft picks acquired over years of appalling performances in the standings, the team has never been able to find a way to translate the talent into positive results.

Things didn't start well for the Oilers, who have a new coach in McLellan and new GM in Chiarelli to try to whip the club into shape. They started with four straight losses.

As McDavid grew more comfortable, though, so did the rest of the team. Edmonton went 5-4 since. Who knows what happens now, but losing arguably the team's best player could send them into a tailspin.

None of that matters to fans elsewhere, but the league has lost its most exciting talent in years for at least a couple of months.

We're being robbed of Friday night's scheduled head-to-head matchup between Crosby and McDavid, one of those litmus-test battles that would no doubt bring out the best in both the reigning face of the league and the young challenger.

We're going to miss out on countless new snippets of spectacular speed and skill, be it a dynamic game-winning goal (check out the video below) or a slick pass to a teammate.

It's easy to forget the players' humanity at times as well, and there's no doubt the impact will be felt most of all by McDavid himself.

"He's disappointed; it's disappointing to get injured," McLellan told NHL.com's Derek Van Diest. "It's his rookie year, things are going really well and he wants to be part of the group—which he still will be, just not in a uniform for a little while. I have a 19-year-old, I can't imagine how he would feel if he was in the NHL in his first year and got hurt."

The sting will be felt by many until his return.

In the meantime, the NHL needs its other already established superstars to pick up the slack.