Andrew Ference saw it right away.

Last year, when Connor McDavid arrived as the No. 1 overall pick and the savior of the Edmonton Oilers franchise, Ference was still the captain. At least, temporarily. Because of injuries to the veteran defenseman and a desire to get to know the roster better, the Oilers opted to go without a full-time captain last season.

But even then, Ference knew the future of the Oilers was in the hands of the teenage kid from Newmarket, Ontario. On the ice and off. He’d seen it play out so many times in his career. It didn’t matter who was officially the captain, the personality of every team Ference played for eventually evolved into the personality of the team’s best player.

“The way teams play are led by their best player. It’s not by their captain, it’s not by their oldest guy, it’s always by their best player,” Ference said when we chatted last year at Oilers training camp. “Even if there’s a bunch of guys on the team that aren’t like that person? It’s amazing how much it matches up.”

For Ference, he first noticed it in Pittsburgh with Mario Lemieux. Lemieux was an all-time great player, but also carried himself with class and maturity off the ice. So too, then, did the Penguins.

“That was kind of the way the team rolled,” Ference said. “When the team went on the road, everyone was sharp and very business-like.”

In Calgary, it was the same way. Jarome Iginla was the best player then, and his physical play and willingness to grind it out in the corners set the tone for the rest of the team. It became how that Flames played.

“Everybody else feels tougher,” Ference said. “Everybody else feels more hard-nosed; when that guy is carrying the flag in that way, it really does set the tone.”

In Boston, it was both Zdeno Chara and Patrice Bergeron who shaped the identity of the team.

So when McDavid arrived in Edmonton, it wasn’t his world-class speed or ridiculous hands that excited Ference. It was the off-ice observations that he appreciated most, because he knew they would eventually be echoed by the rest of the team.

“He won the scholastic player of the year. He’s a very smart kid,” Ference said. “You look at the way he’s dealt with all the attention and all the media, downplaying everything to deflect attention from himself. ... Behind the curtain when you step in to the locker room, he isn’t walking around thumping his chest. He’s not walking around with an air about him. He’s a good solid person. That’s what excites me.”

Ference knew it then; that was the personality the Oilers would eventually take on. It was inevitable.

A year later, the Oilers made it official. At 19 years and 266 days, McDavid is now the youngest captain in NHL history.

Oilers coach Todd McLellan was looking for signs McDavid was ready to lead as far back as last season. He first truly saw it on the ice when McDavid returned from his collarbone injury and asserted himself immediately on the ice. Some of the tentativeness and the way he deferred to veterans early on in his rookie season was completely gone. His play had already evolved.

Off the ice, McLellan saw a player who carried himself with confidence in the dressing room, and after the season in conversations with McDavid, the dialogue was very open between the coaching staff and its best young player.

As McLellan put it when meeting with reporters in Edmonton on Wednesday, McDavid was very open with them and they were open with him.

“Players that aren’t ready don’t share a lot,” McLellan said. “At that point, it was real evident he was ready to lead the group.”

As part of a group that cycled through captains in San Jose, McLellan and the Oilers were smart not to mess around with this one. The Oilers were eventually going to be McDavid’s team, it made no sense to give the captaincy to a veteran when everybody in the room knew where things were headed.

It’s early and McDavid is young, but McLellan also points out that McDavid has been dealing with media and high expectation since he was 14 years old. He knows how to handle himself in high-pressure situations. He’s already an ambassador of the game, like Sidney Crosby before him.

“He takes a lot of responsibility for the team and puts it on his shoulders, which good leaders do,” McLellan said. “If he’s doing things right and preparing properly and practicing the right way, others will follow him.”

McDavid replaces Gabriel Landeskog as the youngest permanent captain in NHL history, but the Crosby comparison is the better one.

Crosby was named captain when he was 31 days older than McDavid was yesterday. Crosby was the face of the franchise and the face of the league, a direction in which McDavid is headed.

But in some ways, McDavid has it easier than Crosby did in 2007 when he was named captain of the Penguins. The culture in an NHL dressing room then was much different than it is now.

“It was crazier when Sid was named captain,” said former Penguin Colby Armstrong, who was another young player on that Penguins roster when Crosby got the "C." “Veterans had a place in the game. There was a different culture. You didn’t talk to veterans as much. ... You minded your manners and played hard.”

That Penguins team had established veterans like Mark Recchi and Gary Roberts, who had major sway in the dressing room.

“They were good, they helped him,” Armstrong said.

But it was a lot to put on the shoulders of a teenager at that time in the NHL.

Armstrong sees how the NHL has evolved, how it’s a younger player’s game and the McDavid captaincy feels like a natural conclusion. Those veterans who dominated a dressing room 10 years ago have now been replaced on NHL rosters by kids just a couple of years out of junior hockey.

There are a few Oilers over 30 years old, with Matt Hendricks, Mark Letestu and Andrej Sekera very much in the minority.

The average age of the Oilers' leadership group of McDavid, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Milan Lucic and Jordan Eberle is 24 years old.

The only possible issue in naming McDavid captain was removed when Taylor Hall was traded to the Devils in the offseason, since he would have been able to stake the claim to the captaincy. Perhaps, that was part of the motivation of the deal.

Now, it’s set up for McDavid to succeed.

“It’s a young guy’s game. It’s their team and their room. [McDavid] is so driven and hungry,” Armstrong said. “Deep down, he’s honored, but he’s probably not surprised. ... He’s the guy. He’s the Sidney Crosby of the Oilers. There’s no question. Those guys tick at another level than other guys.”

Landeskog is still looking for success in Colorado, but every single one of the other five youngest captains in NHL history went on to win a Stanley Cup with their franchise.

Crosby was named captain in 2007, he won a Cup in 2009. Vincent Lecavalier was named captain in 2000 and won a Cup in 2004. Jonathan Toews was named captain in 2008 and won a Cup in 2010. It took Steve Yzerman the longest of this group, but he eventually got there, too. He was named captain in 1986 and won his first Cup in 1997.

They’ve set a high bar for McDavid. There’s no doubt he expects nothing less.