SUNRISE, Fla. (AP) — Sidney Crosby was one of the players Connor McDavid looked up to and aspired to be like someday.
But when McDavid was a kid and pretending to score a Stanley Cup-winning goal, he always imagined himself in that position.
“I don't know if we'll ever get that opportunity,” McDavid said. “Right now, we have that opportunity.”
That chance only became possible after McDavid led the Edmonton Oilers from a 3-0 deficit in the finals to play the Florida Panthers on Monday night in Game 7 with hockey's hallowed trophy on the line. Now, as he and his teammates attempt to complete the greatest comeback in sports history, they're trying to shake off the effects and focus on accomplishing something that hasn't been done in the NHL since 1942.
“We all know it's not a normal game, but we've got to make it as normal as possible in our minds,” McDavid said after the Oilers' final practice of the season on Sunday. “Our team has done a great job of doing our best in these big moments, and I think that's going to be the same here.”
McDavid, playing in his first Cup final, was at his best when it mattered most, recording four points each in Games 4 and 5 to prevent a sweep by Edmonton, then dragging the Panthers back across North America to Alberta for a home win over the Oilers in Game 6, though McDavid did not get on the scoresheet.
McDavid, the three-time reigning league MVP, has never been held scoreless in two consecutive games in all of these playoff games and is the biggest X-factor on the big stage. Veteran winger Corey Perry, a 2007 Cup winner who is reaching his third final in four years, said of McDavid that he “can do magic at any point in the game.”
“Every game, we know we have the best player in the world on our side,” said McDavid's longtime partner, MVP Leon Draisaitl, who assisted on the opening goal in Game 6. “But in this league, it's really, really hard to be missing one or two or three guys. You need the whole team and I think we proved that.”
Forward Mattias Janmark called McDavid the catalyst and face of this Finals comeback, but with Selke Trophy winner and Defensive Forward of the Year Aleksandr Barkov and elite goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky on the other side, it will take more than just captain magic to finish a job last accomplished more than 80 years ago.
Draisaitl acknowledged that being human means dwelling on the bigger picture, the idea of joining the 1942 Maple Leafs with a name in the record books. Teammate Connor Brown called it “a chance to finish the script we've been writing.”
The Panthers will be hoping to turn that around after winning the first three games of the series and coming within one win of clinching their first championship in franchise history, but things haven't gone well since then.
“It doesn't matter what the outcome was or what we expected,” Florida winger Matthew Tkachuk said, “this is just an incredible opportunity, so obviously we want to recognize and remember the positives that helped us beat them earlier in the series, but I'm just trying to forget about it all. We're just going to go out there and win one game and that's all that matters.”
Edmonton coach Chris Knobloch foreshadowed this on the morning of Game 4, when he said, “I'm really excited about the next 10 days,” just hours before his team faced elimination for the first time. It sounded delusional then, but prophetic now. They crushed the Panthers 18-5 with an 8-1, 5-3, 5-1 victory, sending the series back to South Florida. Few expected there to be more hockey this season.
“I don't think there was ever a moment in the locker room where we thought they didn't have a chance,” Knobloch said.
For McDavid, here's a chance to hoist the Cup in the same building where he was drafted nine years ago, a chance to end a Canadian title drought that lasted 31 years and 30 seasons and add to his legacy as the greatest player in hockey, one who missed nothing except reaching the NHL's pinnacle for the first time.
“We're excited,” McDavid said, “We've worked hard to get to this position and this is a great opportunity for our group and we're looking forward to it.”
