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Greg Wyshynski
EDMONTON — Connor McDavid was asked if the Edmonton Oilers had to lose in the Stanley Cup Final before they could win a championship.
“If you asked me this question last year, I’d probably say no. Now that we’ve lost, I’ll say, ‘Yeah, of course you’ve got to lose before you win,'” the Oilers captain said, drawing a laugh at media day.
McDavid and the Oilers won the Western Conference and earned a Stanley Cup Final rematch with the Florida Panthers, who defeated Edmonton in Game 7 last season after blowing a 3-0 series lead. McDavid was crushed by the defeat. Being named the winner of the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoffs MVP was of little consolation. So getting another chance to win the Cup was his solitary focus entering this season.
“I went to see him in the summer and all he talked about was, ‘I just want to win a Cup’ That was it. We didn’t talk about anything else. This is his singular focus,” said Oilers GM Stan Bowman, who was hired last offseason to succeed Ken Holland.
“He’s accomplished everything he could accomplish individually in this sport. He continues to dazzle us every game. You run out of superlatives to talk about him as a player,” Bowman said of McDavid, the five-time scoring champion and three-time league MVP. “You could see how badly he wanted it last year when it didn’t go Edmonton’s way in Game 7. Right now, he’s on a mission.”
McDavid leads the Stanley Cup playoffs with 26 points in 16 games, including a postseason-high 20 assists. He was especially good in the Oilers’ five-game Western Conference finals win over the Dallas Stars, with nine points.
“He’s just the ultracompetitor who wants to win so badly,” his linemate Ryan Nugent-Hopkins said. “The more experience you have, the easier it is to kind of settle in and play your game. I think just having a little bit more experience last year helps us.”
McDavid said his second trip to the Stanley Cup Final “feels more normal” than last postseason’s first trip.
“It’s different in the sense that it feels less big, you know? Last year felt monumental. Very dramatic. This year feels very normal,” he said. “It’s easier to play and function when it’s just another day.”
To that end, McDavid said he feels “more comfortable” in returning to play for the Stanley Cup.
“I would say it’s just dealing with the emotion of it [better]. There’s a big circus. It can feel like it’s larger than it is, but at the end of the day it’s another series. We’re playing another great team and you’ve got to beat them before anything else happens. So they have our complete focus,” he said.
“All of our energy is going into beating the Florida Panthers. There should be nothing else on anyone’s mind.”