No NHL team has come back from a 3-0 deficit to win a Stanley Cup Final since the Toronto Maple Leafs did it against the Detroit Red Wings in April 1942. Now, 82 years later, the Edmonton Oilers can change that story . On Monday night, on the outskirts of the Everglades, the Oilers will face the Florida Panthers in Game 7 and try to win their fourth consecutive victory to take the Cup and become the first Canadian NHL champions since the Montreal Canadiens in 1993. If that happens, Right In Oilers fashion, the game will likely be crowned one of the NHL’s all-time greats — or at least one of the most memorable in league history. And the Oilers captain, a generational talent, will have returned to the place where his career with the team began.
June 26, 2015 was a Friday and there was a buzz at the BT&T Center in Sunrise, Florida, home (yet under a different name) of the Panthers. It was NHL draft night, and the No. 1 pick was an 18-year-old from north Toronto who had lit up the Ontario Hockey League for three years and led Canada to a World Junior Championship the previous winter. Connor McDavid has played at another level his entire life, allowed to skate at age six with age nine, and given “exceptional status” to enter the OHL at age 15, a year earlier, where he became the most decorated player in the league’s history.
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The Oilers, on the other hand, were coming off another dismal season. They finished second to last in the Western Conference. By 2015, the Oilers had become something of a perennial recruiting joke. The team picked first place overall in 2010, 2011 and 2012, seventh place overall in 2013, then third place overall again in 2013 – each a reflection of Edmonton’s poor performance. No matter how many draft picks the Oilers added to the roster, they found themselves back at or near the bottom of the league time and time again. But then, here was McDavid. Could he finally be the answer?
“I think my expectations exceed any of those that anyone else puts on me,” McDavid told the Globe and Mail after the Oilers selected him first overall. “I just need to make sure I’m playing my game. If I meet my expectations, I’m likely to meet everyone else’s as well.”
These expectations were very high. Dubbed the Oilers’ savior, he earned the nickname “McJesus” – which stuck thanks to his divine moves on the ice and highlight reel goals. But a savior carries the weight of a people, and McDavid has carried the story of the Oilers since draft day. The story of the team’s World Cup victories in the 1980s, defeat in 2006 and the many bad years that followed. Not to mention the yoke of a guy named Wayne Gretzky.
McDavid walked into what was, on paper, a talented dressing room. Thanks to the top picks of previous years, the Oilers had guys like Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Darnell Nurse and the man they drafted the year before, Leon Draisaitl. But the Oilers were “a mismanaged collection of young stars who can burn no brighter than the dumpster fire in which they are consumed,” scoffed an NHL columnist a few months before McDavid was drafted. Things didn’t work out right away. The Oilers only made the playoffs once over the next four seasons, finishing near the bottom of the division every two years. They were eliminated from the postseason in the qualifying round in 2020, and the following year they were eliminated in the first round. A defeat in the Western Conference final followed in 2021-22, and they were defeated in the second round last season. Still, during this time, McDavid solidified his status as one of the greats. His seven consecutive 100-point seasons before the age of 28, for example, put him in the conversation with not only Gretzky but also Mario Lemieux. But with his success, expectations turned to doubts. As good as McDavid was, he could I won The World Cup in Edmonton? Could he match Gretzky’s greatness? And what was missing from this talented team? That’s it goalkeeper? Defense? They were cursed from above? Or was it the city itself, unable to attract the players the team needed for a championship?
Just months before McDavid was drafted, Edmonton was selected in a poll of NHL players as the least desirable city to call home. Edmonton, the NHL’s northernmost outpost, since the discovery of oil nearby in the 1940s, has been a blue-collar city in a boom-and-bust cycle of commodity prices. He is proud of his rude and borderline attitude. But it’s not always the easiest place to be. When McDavid arrived in town, Edmonton’s unemployment rate it was 5.4%; it reached 15.6% during the pandemic and is now just under 7%. The city is fighting a historic homelessness crisis It is a drug epidemic on the streets. But just like their team, Edmonton may be down, but they’re not out. And the Oilers are doing their part – the team’s first three rounds have generated a estimated CAD$179 million in economic activity for the city.
The Oilers played their final home game of the 2023-24 season on Friday to an endless roar from the crowd — the sound of a city that may have needed a little hope. On Monday night, they will be back in Florida as they contemplate history – that of their team, that of the ’42 Leafs and that of a nation desperate for the Cup to return to its home and native land for the first time in more 30 years old. All these expectations may be too much for the Oilers, although there is a lot of pressure on the Panthers to avoid a devastating capitulation after their first Stanley Cup title appeared all but theirs 10 days ago. It may be that the only Gretzky feat that McDavid surpasses this year is that of the Great total postseason points, something that in itself seemed impossible. Then again, what else is a miracle? The impossible is what McDavid does.
