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Where Connor McDavid Grew Up: Newmarket, Ontario

Joshua Silvia
3–4 minutes
Connor McDavid in his Edmonton Oilers uniform — the Newmarket, Ontario native and three-time Hart Trophy winner
Photo: Connor Mah · CC BY-SA 2.0 · via Wikimedia Commons
The short answer
Connor McDavid was born January 13, 1997 in Richmond Hill, Ontario and grew up in Newmarket, Ontario, a town of about 90,000 just north of Toronto. He played minor hockey for the York Simcoe Express and the Toronto Marlboros, and was granted ‘exceptional player’ status by the Ontario Hockey League in 2012 — only the third player in OHL history (after John Tavares and Aaron Ekblad) — letting him enter junior hockey at age 15.

A York Region hockey upbringing

Brian McDavid (Connor’s father) is a lawyer in Newmarket. Kelly McDavid (his mother) ran a marketing consultancy. Connor’s older brother Cameron played junior hockey at the OJHL level and works in real estate. The family lived in a 4-bedroom house in the Stonehaven area of Newmarket, walking distance to two ice arenas (Magna Centre and Hollingsworth Arena).

Connor played his first organized hockey at age 4. By age 6 he was playing one age category up; by age 9 he was playing two up. He scored 209 points in 40 games for the Toronto Marlboros’ minor-midget team in 2011-12 — leading the Greater Toronto Hockey League in scoring by a margin of nearly 100 points over the second-place player.

Exceptional-player status — only the third

The Ontario Hockey League’s ‘exceptional player’ status was created in 2005 specifically because John Tavares had so dominated minor hockey that the league had to make a rule for the rare player who needed to enter junior earlier than 16. Tavares was granted status in 2005 and went #1 to Oshawa. Aaron Ekblad got status in 2011 and went to Barrie. Connor was the third in 2012 and was selected #1 overall in the 2012 OHL Priority Selection by the Erie Otters.

He played three OHL seasons in Erie (2012-2015), winning the OHL Player of the Year (Red Tilson Trophy) in 2013-14 and the OHL Most Outstanding Player in 2014-15. The Edmonton Oilers won the 2015 NHL Draft Lottery and took him first overall — the franchise’s fourth #1 overall pick in six years (Taylor Hall 2010, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins 2011, Nail Yakupov 2012, McDavid 2015).

Newmarket after McDavid

The town of Newmarket renamed Glenway Park to Connor McDavid Park in 2018, the year after Edmonton’s 2017 playoff run. The Magna Centre arena has installed a permanent display case in the lobby with one of Connor’s youth jerseys, his minor-hockey championship ring from 2011, and a hockey stick. The town also funded an annual scholarship for a Newmarket-area minor-hockey player to attend the McDavid Hockey School each summer.

McDavid bought a house in Stouffville (the next town over from Newmarket) in 2018 for off-season training and family stays. His parents still live in the original Stonehaven area. He returns to Newmarket each summer to skate at the same arenas where he learned to play.

Newmarket, Ontario, Canada

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Background facts cross-referenced with the Wikipedia article on Connor McDavid and Pro-Football-Reference / Basketball-Reference public records. Lead image via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0).

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