A clip from an upcoming Amazon documentary featuring Oilers Connor McDavid has leaked on social media and Connor McDavid has broken his silence.

Connor McDavid called it some of the most raw and hard-hitting hockey footage ever captured. His words would prove prophetic based on a brief but potent 10-second teaser that dropped Monday.

On the highly touted Amazon documentary series, ‘Faceoff: Inside the NHL’, viewers get to see sides of the hockey players they don’t typically see. These included a heated dressing room scene with the Edmonton Oilers following their Game 2 loss to the Florida Panthers, in which McDavid, exasperated, tries to instill more urgency into his teammates’ heads. McDavid broke his silence on the clip after his team’s latest preseason game.

 
«It was never my plan to be the star of the show,» the Edmonton Oilers captain said jokingly after a 6-3 preseason loss to Calgary. «I think we wanted to dip our toe in, but – here we are – headfirst off the diving board.»
 

The series represents new territory in gaining unprecedented access to the emotional highs and lows of NHL players, a group generally known for a poised character. Connor McDavid himself is famously private, so it’s even more remarkable that he let cameras into such fragile spaces. He readily admits it wasn’t easy to share his pain and frustration with the world, but that it was part of the deal. For McDavid, the discomfort was worth it to provide a more genuine taste of what life can be like in the NHL.

 
«You’ve got to understand some of the show is that they get to contextualize it as much as they want,» he said. «It’s interesting how they cut it up. They obviously need to make a story.

«Guys are playing for their dream. You’ll see that. You’ll feel that from both sides.»

– Connor McDavid
 

The six-part series covers the entirety of the 2023-24 season, going behind the scenes with a number of players and teams. For Connor McDavid, and his Oilers teammates Leon Draisaitl and Zach Hyman, that means two episodes: episode five covers the personal and professional paths of the trio, while episode six zeroes in on McDavid in the red-hot pressure of the Stanley Cup Final. It is likely to drop on October 4th, putting it in the company of Netflix’s popular sports documentaries like ‘Drive to Survive’ and ‘Full Swing’: two series’ that go inside the world of Formula 1 and the PGA Tour, respectively.

One of the more raw clips that will pop up within the series is from the Oilers’ dressing room following their crushing Game 7 loss to the Panthers. The room is stark; the players are emotionally spent, some even with tears in their eyes. Outside, with the Panthers and their fans rejoicing in their victory, the sounds of jubilation come through, pointing to the starkness of the mood inside the Oilers’ space. It was a scene of devastation, actually coming so close to glory and seeing it snatched away, a feeling shared by every athlete who has endured defeat at the very pinnacle of competition.

Zach Hyman said fans would be surprised by a Connor McDavid outburst during the Game 2 clip, but to the guys in the locker room, it wasn’t a surprise at all. McDavid is vocal when the games are big, so it’s just one of those moments that happens in the emotion of a playoff series. Hyman followed that up by saying the intense emotions and raw moments captured in the series are just part of the deal when teams make deep playoff runs. The playoffs are such an emotional rollercoaster that there are sure to be plenty of powerful storylines.

While Connor McDavid admits he’s not entirely comfortable being such a focal point in the documentary, he understands the bigger picture. He doesn’t like to dwell on the negative moments, nor does he like being asked to talk about them much. Still, he says, anything that puts hockey in a brighter light and gives the game more visibility cannot be bad. ‘Faceoff’, in the end, will provide fans with one of the very few forays into the heart of the NHL, highlighting the passion, pain, and drive of its players.