The Hockey Neutral Should Be All In On Connor McDavid & The Oilers
McJesus is chasing his first Stanley Cup and hockey immortality, and that should compel all hockey fans outside of Florida to tune in and watch...
For NHL fans everywhere, the best time of year is about to reach its absolute peak.
If the Playoffs are hockey nirvana, then the Stanley Cup Final is the absolute zenith. I’ve said it many times before and I’ll say it again, the Stanley Cup Playoffs are the best postseason in sports. Period.
Game 1 of the Stanley Cup between the Edmonton Oilers and the Florida Panthers is on Saturday (8 PM EDT). It is a compelling matchup featuring a plethora of storylines and a million different reasons to tune in and watch.
Sure, having the New York Rangers in the Final would no doubt have been better for the NHL in terms of viewing figures. The Blueshirts, after all, do reside in America’s biggest sports market. As such, maybe more casual fans would have been inclined to tune in. The Dallas Stars and that monster market would have helped in that respect too.
However, this is a Stanley Cup Final befitting of having as many eyeballs on it as possible. The Panthers have established themselves as one of the best teams in hockey, and arguably as the favorite to come out on top and lift the greatest prize in all of sports. On the other side, the Oilers have a rich history, are trying to win the franchise’s first championship since 1990 and are also looking to end Canada’s 30-year plus wait for a Stanley Cup.
Oh, and they also happen to boast the greatest player on the planet in Connor McDavid.
In my opinion at least, hockey fans, and sports enthusiasts in general, should be dialed in to the Stanley Cup Final just for the McDavid factor alone.
And, if you aren’t a Panthers fan or happen to live in Florida, then you should absolutely be rooting for McDavid and the Oilers to win and lift Lord Stanley.
Granted, the Panthers are a great story on their own merits and they’ve now put together two incredible postseason runs in back-to-back years. While they were very much the underdog on the way to being beat in five games by the Vegas Golden Knights in last year’s Stanley Cup Final, they enter Game 1 against the Oilers as the favorites.
It isn’t hard to see why. If you were constructing a championship winner in the lab, one that could survive and then thrive over the course of a grueling postseason schedule, then you would end up with the Panthers as the dream outcome. Boasting great goaltending, playoff toughness (they lead the playoffs in hits with 739), depth, the ability to roll four legit lines, star power, one of the best defensive two-way forwards in the game in Aleksander Barkov, and an elite game-changer in Matthew Tkachuk, Florida ticks all the boxes and holds the edge over Edmonton in most areas. Plus, having clearly run out of gas against the Knights last year, the Panthers will only be better for that experience this time around.
From having the better goaltender in Sergei Bobrovsky, to the greater depth all-round, to a superior defense that is averaging just 2.29 Goals-Against in the postseason, the Panthers are well positioned to handle some unfinished business from last year.
But, and as much as I respect the hell out of what has been built in South Florida over the past few years, I’m rooting for hockey immortality. I’m rooting for Connor McDavid to win his first Stanley Cup and cement his status as one of the greatest of all time.
See, there is a much-believed notion in sports that states you can’t truly be considered one of the best to have ever played unless you have at least one championship to your name. See the below list of iconic former NHL greats for solid gold proof:
Marcel Dionne (1,771 points). Joe Thornton (1,539 points). Adam Oates (1,420 points). Dale Hawerchuk (1,409 points). Mats Sundin (1,349 points). Mike Gartner (1,335 points). Henrik Lundqvist (459 wins). Gilbert Perreault (1,326 points). Jarome Iginla (1,300 points). Pavel Bure (779 points).
Many of those players are Hall of Famers. Others, like Thornton, should join them in the Hockey Hall of Fame soon.
However, despite all having carved out storied careers, all of those players hung up the skates without ever getting to hoist the Stanley Cup above their head. As a result, they will always be viewed through a different prism as opposed to the true greats who were able to climb to the top of the mountain.
Of course, McDavid belongs in his own tier when it comes to most naturally-gifted players to have ever played the game of hockey. However, he won’t belong in the same conversation as the likes of Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux until he wins a ring. Whether you view that as fair or not, those are just the rules of engagement.
That’s why I find this Stanley Cup Final matchup so intriguing, and why I’m praying to the Hockey Gods that McDavid can get off the schneid and lift the Stanley Cup in order to cement his legacy as a true superstar.
I’m huge into storylines, and McDavid’s quest to fulfill his hockey destiny should be seen as the biggest and most meaningful one in this series.
He enters Game 1 already floating in very rarified air. He’s at the very zenith of his powers, he’s the greatest player of his generation and of his era, and the work has already started to add a fifth face to hockey’s Mount Rushmore given McDavid’s considerable and historical impact on the NHL already. And he’s only 27-years-old.
McDavid has recorded 100 points or more in seven of his nine NHL seasons. He won the scoring title and league MVP in just his second season. He has already won five Art Ross and three Hart trophies. He’s also won the Ted Lindsay Award four times. Throw into the mix a Maurice Richard Trophy and six All-Star appearances, then you get a pretty good understanding of just how great McDavid has been through the first chunk of his NHL career. And he hasn’t even hit his peak yet.
The heir to Gretzky also has 106 points in just 67 postseason games, despite team playoff success having eluded him so far. The Oilers made the postseason in just one of McDavid’s first four seasons, and they didn’t get past the second round until 2022. Another second round exit, this time to the eventual champions the Golden Knights, followed in 2023.
Then, as an extension of yet another playoff failure, Edmonton struggled out of the gate this season with McDavid tallying 10 points in his first 11 games. Now, it is worth pointing out that that total isn’t actually all that bad. But, for a player of McDavid’s considerable stature, you can consider that a true slump. With just three wins through the first 13 games, the front office fired Head Coach Jay Woodcroft and hired Kris Knoblauch, who was once considered for the Rangers’ top job having been in charge of their AHL team, the Hartford Wolf Pack.
Of note, Knoblauch actually coached McDavid back in junior hockey during their time with the Erie Otters in the Ontario Hockey League. The connection between coach and superstar player has been clear to see, with the Oilers reaching previously unobtainable new heights with Knoblauch at the helm. McDavid averaged 1.88 points per game the rest of the way after suffering a slow start, finishing the regular season with 132 points in 76 games.
He’s only continued to elevate his play when it really matters the most and on the biggest stage possible. McDavid enters Game 1 with 31 points (5 G, 26 A) in 18 postseason contests. He is also within touching distance of breaking another Gretzky record. The Great One currently holds the record for most assists in a single postseason with 31, and McDavid is just five away with 26. Unless Florida completely shuts him down, you’d almost be shocked if McJesus doesn’t obliterate that record by the time a Stanley Cup Champion has been crowned.
And that’s why for all the talk of the Panthers being an elite defensive team, which they are, you can’t look past McDavid or the Oilers in this series for a second. You just can’t. McDavid is a singular talent of the like we’ve never seen before and we’ll probably never see again. He’s an absolute freak of nature, a supernova, a supremely-gifted Hockey God who can take over a game and flip the momentum in an instance.
Just look at his jaw-dropping, highlight-reel goal in Game 6 of the Western Conference Finals against the Dallas Stars. With a first trip to the Finals on the line, and the game tied at 0-0, McDavid proceeded to do what only he is capable of doing on the ice. Starting against the boards before taking the puck in the center of the ice, he glided his way past a crowd of bodies with all the grace and beauty of a ballerina, before scoring on the backhand. In doing so, he undressed Miro Heiskanen and made one of the premier defensemen in the NHL look silly. It was a typical McDavid goal in that it just defied all logic. Yet, the No. 1 pick in the 2015 NHL Draft has built an entire career on doing just that.
Averaging 1.58 playoff points per game over his career - which ranks third behind Lemieux (1.61) and Gretzky (1.84) - McDavid has the insane ability to raise his game when the spotlight is at its brightest. There isn’t a much grander stage than the Stanley Cup Final, and the pressure will be at its most suffocating. However, the phenom has proved time and time again that he is built for these kind of moments, and he now has the opportunity to add another breathtaking chapter to an already remarkable career.
And, if McDavid is able to write his most important chapter this summer by winning his first Stanley Cup, then he will automatically enter the upper-echelons of the NHL’s all-time greats. He’s pretty much there, but he needs a championship to make it official.
Should that happen, and should McDavid produce more signature moments along the way to ultimate glory, then his status as the true heir to The Great One will also be cemented. And the statue of Gretzky holding aloft Lord Stanley outside Rogers Place should have company in the not-too distant future too.
For someone who doesn’t have a dog in this particular fight given that my Rangers were eliminated in the ECF, I am fully invested in rooting for McDavid doing what the Oilers hoped he would do when they drafted him back in 2015. And that’s bring a Stanley Cup back to Edmonton and complete his journey as the franchise savior he was always destined to become.
McDavid chasing hockey immortality is a storyline worth getting behind. Unless you’re a Florida Panthers fan, obviously. And that’s why I will be fully locked in come Game 1 on Saturday.