Last time was just an introduction. Now is when the real story begins.

The preseason started for Jack Eichel at BU yesterday, and in his first college game, an exhibition against St. Thomas, Eichel recorded 5 primary assists. Five. Connor McDavid’s preseason is over, and in Erie’s first four games, McDavid has 12 points (5G, 7A). McDavid also earned Erie’s player of the game suit, a somewhat dubious honor given the suit itself and the fact that passing a suit around a locker room of teenage boys is going to be a terrible idea once flu season gets into full swing.

It’s a pretty safe assumption that these two are going to go 1 and 2 in the draft in June (unless Noah Hanifin ends up scoring 500 points or something). That’s not the exciting part. What I’m looking forward to is the journey they’re each going to take to get there.

Will we see McDavid break OHL scoring records? He’s averaging 3 points-per-game right now, and although with most people that wouldn’t be an indicator, McDavid’s one that I can see keep that going. Drouin did for long stretches last season, and I’m gonna go out on a limb and call McDavid more of a natural talent than Jonathan Drouin (I’ll be on twitter if you want to throw things at me for that). Eichel is already showing pretty nice chemistry with his linemate Oksanen, assisting on all 4 of his goals yesterday, and he didn’t exactly have a poor showing last year with the NTDP.

And if everything goes as it should, we’ll get to see the two of them meet in Canada for this year’s World Junior Championship. You can bet I’ll be watching.