Connor-icles: McDavid scores sweet defence-splitting goal in return to OHL (VIDEO)

If anyone else scored after the defenceman he was coming down against redirected the puck into the middle of the ice, it would be puck luck. With respect to Connor McDavid and the spectacular goal that he scored in his first OHL game since helping Team Canada capture the world junior championship gold medal, it's a safe presumption (well, creative licence really) that he was making a bank pass off the foot of Sarnia Sting defenceman Alex Black.

The Sting got the last laugh with a last-minute rally to beat Erie 4-3 on Thursday, but for style points, there is no topping what McDavid did in his first league game in more than eight weeks. In the second period, the 17-year-old scored with apparent ease, splitting the defence, recovering the puck after playing it off the inside of Black's right blade and deking Taylor Dupuis, one of the OHL's better post-to-post goalies.

Indeed, that was pretty. The main takeaway, though, was that McDavid was unimpressed since it was his only point and the Otters lost. So, woe unto the London Knights, who host Erie in a nationally televised game on Friday?

=“I don't think I played a good game at all, to be honest,” McDavid told the Sarnia Observer's Terry Bridge. “I thought we just hung around, and I didn't do enough.”

McDavid's 11 points in seven WJC games surpassed the production of 17-year-old Sidney Crosby (nine in six) in 2005 with a stacked Team Canada. It is going to be something else to watch what McDavid does over the back half of this season with Erie.

Even Dupuis had to be sanguine about being the foil for a highlight-reel goal.

Neate Sager is a writer for Yahoo! Canada Sports. Follow him on Twitter @neatebuzzthenet.