Connor McDavid wants to go home with the right trophy this year.
The Edmonton Oilers captain was voted winner of the Conn Smythe Trophy as the most valuable player in last year’s NHL playoffs. But he didn’t get the hardware he really wanted – the Stanley Cup. McDavid had to settle for being the sixth player in the six-plus decades since the Conn Smythe was first awarded to win the trophy despite playing for the losing team in the Final.
McDavid led all scorers last spring with 42 points, including a playoff-record 34 assists. But none of them came in Game 7 of the Final, a 2-1 loss to the Florida Panthers. He hopes to get his name on the most famous trophy in sports this year when the Oilers and Panthers face off in a rematch. Edmonton hosts Game 1 at Rogers Place on Wednesday night and is trying to win its first championship since 1990, when the Oilers capped a run of five Cups in seven years by defeating the Boston Bruins in five games.
The five-time NHL scoring champion hopes to follow the formula of NHL stars such as Sidney Crosby who’ve become Cup-winners after failing on their first try. Crosby and the Pittsburgh Penguins were involved in the most recent of the 11 Cup Final rematches, losing to the Detroit Red Wings in six games in 2008 before beating the Wings in seven games the following year. The Crosby-led Penguins went on to win the Cup again in 2016 and 2017.
McDavid, a big Crosby fan, watched No. 87 go from agony to ecstasy in a year and wants that for himself.
“I think as a kid growing up, you have such an appreciation for seeing teams that win and seeing the Cup brought out,” he said Tuesday during Media Day. “Seeing Sid win after growing up and being a Sid fan was pretty cool to see. There are steps to everything, and when you’re a kid, you want to just play in the NHL. You want to be successful and do all these great things, and there comes a point where it’s only about winning.
“I think this group reached that point years ago, and we’ve been on the cusp ever since. It’s been a few years here with this corps, and we’re looking to finish the job.”
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Connor McDavid ‘on a mission’ to bring Stanley Cup to Edmonton
Stan Bowman, who joined the Oilers as general manager and vice president of hockey operations last summer, knows a thing or three about winning the Cup – he was the architect of the Chicago Blackhawks’ trio of Cup-winning teams from 2010-15. He said he noticed right away that his captain had a single focus for this season.
“The first time I talked to Connor, I went to see him in the summer after I started, and all he talked about was ‘I just want to win the Cup.’ That was it. We didn’t talk about anything else. This is his singular focus.
“He’s accomplished everything he could accomplish individually in this sport. He continues to dazzle us every game, every round. He’s incredibly motivated and driven to win. You run out of superlatives to talk about him as a player and describe what he does on the ice. I think the thing he does that’s equally impressive is the way he is driving our team with his determination. There’s no one else you want to go into battle with than someone like that. He’s our leader.”
McDavid’s exploits on the ice speak for themselves. But Bowman said his captain is a man on a mission.
“Not only is he impressive with what he can do on the ice, but his focus is driving us,” Bowman said. “You could see how bad he wanted it last year, when it didn’t go Edmonton’s way in Game 7. Right now, he’s on a mission. I think as much as you get excited when you win – I’ve noticed it even from the first round, the second round, even in Dallas, he’s very focused on ‘we need four more wins.”
It’s hard to believe, but this is McDavid’s 10th season since the Oilers made him the No. 1 pick in the 2015 NHL Draft. He’s piled up a load of hardware during that time, but it’s only in the past two years that McDavid and his teammates have broken through to the championship series.
McDavid agrees with his coach, Kris Knoblauch, that the Oilers are better equipped to handle the emotions and challenges of playing in the Stanley Cup Final. That includes navigating the frenzy of Media Day, where he’s naturally one of the most sought-after players.
“I would say it’s just dealing with the emotion of it, just because you feel closer,” he said. “There’s a big circus. It can feel like it’s larger than it is. At the end of the day, it’s another series and we’re playing another great team, and you’ve got to beat them before anything else happens — so they have our complete focus.”
“They” are the Panthers, who are in the Final for the third straight season and looking for back-to-back championships. McDavid said he and his teammates have to have all their focus on atoning for last year’s Game 7 loss in the Final.
“All of our energy is going into beating the Florida Panthers,” he said. “There should be nothing else on anyone’s mind. I think there’s familiarity there. We know what to expect from their game. I think they know what to expect from ours.”
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