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Watch Connor McDavid pull Forsberg move for shorthanded goal in OHL playoffs (VIDEO)

Connor McDavid of the Erie Otters. Photo by Aaron Bel/OHL Images
Connor McDavid of the Erie Otters. Photo by Aaron Bel/OHL Images

During the first game of the OHL semifinal series, Connor McDavid tested Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds goalie Brandon Halverson blocker side on a breakaway and was thwarted.

As they say in the TV highlights business, that would lead to this: McDavid scoring a short-handed breakaway goal with the one-handed Kent Nilsson/Peter Forsberg/Pavel Datsyuk shootout move during the Greyhounds-Erie Otters playoff game on Sunday. After Nick Baptiste cleared the puck high out of the Otters zone, McDavid zoomed past flat-footed defenceman Gustav Bouramann, then plotted how to freeze Halverson.

That was pretty, eh?

No wonder Sportsnet, which typically doesn't go to the Canadian Hockey League's nine U.S. arenas for broadcasts, broke with protocol and decided to head to the Erie Insurance Arena for Sunday's game and Game 4 on Tuesday. It's not like anyone needed confirmation that Connor McDavid is good at hockey, but few players have the chutzpah to try that in a game.

McDavid also scored again in the second period, giving him an OHL-high 18 playoff goals in fewer than 12 games, including seven in fewer than eight periods against a Greyhounds team that came into the series with a 33-3 record since the Jan. 10 trade deadline (and also includes McDavid's presumptive future Edmonton Oilers teammate Darnell Nurse). With Erie potentially playing up to another 11 playoff games (if they beat the Soo in seven and then played a seven-game final against the North Bay-Oshawa survivor), perhaps McDavid could take a run at Cameron Mann's single-playoff record of 27 goals, which was established the year McDavid was born.

That possibility didn't seem so realistic when Sportsnet mentioned Mann's record in a graphic during Erie's second-round series against London. Now it does.

(video: Sportsnet.)

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