The usual way to explain Connor McDavid’s speed is to say he has a great stride. People who have actually coached him say something closer to the opposite: what separates him is what happens when he isn’t striding at all.
“He’ll go 120 feet of zero strides, 100 percent crossovers,” says Joe Quinn, McDavid’s skating and skills coach since he was about 11. That is most of the length of the ice covered without a single forward push.
Below is what the named coaches and one engineering professor say is going on, what the league’s own tracking data confirms, and the honest answer to the question people ask next, which is whether any of it can be taught.
What do his coaches actually point to?
Not the top speed. The absence of a trade-off.
Quinn’s account, relayed by Ken Campbell of The Hockey News, is that McDavid does not decelerate when his hands start working, because he is “a major, major multi-tasker”. Most players give up speed to handle the puck, or give up puck control to go fast. McDavid, in Quinn’s description, “does things at full speed that are hard to defend against”, and the training goal has been to make him accelerate under pressure rather than coast through it.
Sean Maw, an engineering professor at the University of Saskatchewan and a former speed skater, broke the mechanics down for the University of Alberta’s New Trail. His list of what McDavid does differently:
| What he does | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Pushes the skate in the direction that converts to forward speed | Less of each push is wasted sideways |
| Lifts the blade the instant the push is finished | No glide phase, so the next push starts sooner |
| Transfers weight cleanly between skates | Full body mass behind each push |
| Cuts short and hard rather than long and smooth | Higher push frequency |
| Keeps the upper body still through turns | Nothing fights the edge |
The crossovers
This is the part that is genuinely unusual, and it is the part Quinn names first.
A crossover is normally a turning technique. You use it to change direction, then you return to a forward stride on the straight. McDavid uses it as a primary way to move forward in long sequences through the neutral zone and around the offensive zone, which is why Quinn’s line about 120 feet of zero strides is the single most informative sentence anybody has said about his skating.
Mechanically, it works because a crossover generates continuous push from both legs, with no gliding recovery phase between pushes, and because it keeps the skater on an inside edge the whole time rather than passing through a flat. The cost is that it demands ankle and edge control under load that most skaters do not have, and it demands it while the hands are doing something else.
The league’s tracking data shows it is not a stylistic quirk. In 2025-26, McDavid recorded 681 separate speed bursts above 20 mph, the most in the NHL, and 151 above 22 mph, also the most, with the second-placed player on 61. He does not have the highest top speed in the league. He reaches high speed more often than anyone, which is exactly the signature you would expect from a skater who doesn’t have to stop accelerating to do anything else.
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Who taught him to skate like that?
Two people, over more than a decade, and both are on the record.
Joe Quinn has run the skating and skills work since roughly age 11. That timing is the important part: the edge and crossover mechanics described above are the kind of thing that is built before a body stops growing, not bolted on afterward.
Gary Roberts, the former NHL forward, built the strength base starting at 15, at what is now Gary Roberts Performance. Roberts told the Globe and Mail about the beginning of it: “We held him back a bit because we didn’t think he was ready to handle it.”
McDavid still trains there. In August 2026, he appeared in a Gary Roberts Performance clip alongside Leon Draisaitl, Zach Hyman, Chris Tanev and Shane Wright, and the facility has become a pre-camp gathering point for NHL players.
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The strength underneath it
Crossover skating at speed is a hip and ankle problem before it is a quadriceps problem, but the documented numbers from the Roberts years are the only hard physical data that exists on him.
| Measure | Figure | When |
|---|---|---|
| Weight at OHL debut | 175 lb | September 2012 |
| Weight at an Oilers camp | 190 lb | 2015 |
| Weight after a summer of training | 197 lb | 2015 |
| Trap bar deadlift | 405 lb, then 455 lb for three | across one summer |
| Daily intake | 4,500 to 5,000 calories | during that programme |
The listed figures have barely moved since. He is listed at 6 feet 1 inch and 194 pounds by three independent databases. At the 2015 Draft Combine, where players are measured rather than listed, he came in at 6 feet 0.75 inches and 195 pounds.
No source documents any change in his listed build across eleven NHL seasons. For a player who arrived at 18, that is unusual, and it points the explanation back towards technique rather than mass.
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Why has nobody copied it?
Because what the coaches describe is not a technique you can install.
Look again at what is actually on the list. Quinn’s answer is multi-tasking, which is a capacity, not a drill. Maw’s answer is five simultaneous efficiencies, each of which is coachable on its own and none of which is remarkable on its own. The crossover sequencing is trainable, and skating coaches across the league do train it, which is why “skate like McDavid” is now a product category.
What does not transfer is holding all of it together while the puck is on your stick and a defenceman is on your hip. That is what Quinn keeps returning to, and what the burst counts measure: not how fast he can go, but how little it costs him to get there.
There is also a timing answer that nobody likes. Quinn started with him at 11. Roberts started at 15. The mechanics were in place before he played a professional game. A twenty-four-year-old NHL forward who wants to add 120 feet of crossovers to his game is not starting from where McDavid started.
One honest caveat to end on. Quinn has speculated out loud about how much faster McDavid might get, asking, “Can he get to 42 or 43 kilometres per hour?” That is a coach wondering aloud, with no measurement attached, and the tracking data has him some way below it.
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