SUNRISE, Fla. (AP) — Connor McDavid He admired and revered Sidney Crosby as the player he wanted to become one day.
But when McDavid pretended to score the Stanley Cup-winning goal as a kid, he always imagined himself in that position.
“You’re not sure if you’ll ever get that chance,” McDavid said. “Here we have that chance.”
This chance is only possible after McDavid led the Edmonton Oilers back from a 3-0 deficit in the final to set up Game 7. against the Florida Panthers on Monday night with hockey’s hallowed trophy on the line. He and his teammates are now on the verge of completing one of the greatest comebacks in sports history and are trying to ignore the aftermath to focus on accomplishing something the NHL hasn’t done since 1942.
“This is not a normal game, everyone understands that, but you have to make it as normal as possible in your head,” McDavid said after Sunday’s practice, the Oilers’ last of the season. “Our team has done a great job in these big moments and is at its best, and I expect nothing less.”
McDavid is at his best in the most important moments of his first trip to the Cup final, scoring four points in Games 4 and 5 to save Edmonton from relegation, and then the Panthers withdraw across North America to Alberta for a sixth game, which the Oilers won on home ice without him getting on the scoresheet.
The reigning three-time league MVP has not gone without a point in consecutive games this entire playoff series, and McDavid is the biggest X-factor on the big stage. Veteran wing Corey Perry, a 2007 Cup champion who is making his third final in four years, said McDavid can “do magical things at any point in the game.”
“We know every game that we have the best player in the world on our side,” said Leon Draisaitl, McDavid’s longtime running partner and MVP himself, who assisted on the first goal. in Game 6“But in this league, it’s really, really hard to pull off just one or two or three players. You need a whole team, and I think we showed that.”
Striker Mattias Janmark appointed McDavid, the catalyst and the face this rally in the final, but with Winner of the Selke Trophy as the best defensive striker Aleksander Barkov on the other hand, along with Elite Goalkeeper Sergei Bobrovskyit will likely take more than just the magic of its captain to complete a task last accomplished over 80 years ago.
Draisaitl acknowledged that as a human being, you always have the bigger picture in mind, namely the idea of entering the record books with the 1942 Maple Leafs. Teammate Connor Brown called it “a chance to finish the script we wrote.”
It is a script that the Panthers would like to implement the first three games the series and are one win away from claiming the first championship in franchise history. Since then, not much has gone right.
“It doesn’t matter how it went or how you set it up,” Florida winger Matthew Tkachuk said. “This is an absolutely incredible, incredible opportunity. So, yes, you want to recognize or remember some of the good things that helped you beat these guys earlier in the series, but I try to forget all that. Just go in there and win a game. That’s what it comes down to.”
Edmonton coach Kris Knoblauch gave a hint of that on the morning of Game 4 when he said he was “really looking forward to the next 10 days,” hours before his team faced elimination for the first time. What sounded like an illusion then is now a prediction: victories of 8-1, 5-3 and 5-1 to beat the Panthers 18-5 and send the series back to South Florida, where few expected any more hockey to be played this season.
“I don’t think there was a single moment in the locker room where they thought they didn’t have a chance,” Knoblauch said.
Here is the chance for McDavid to lift the trophy in the same building where he was drafted nine years ago to Canada’s title drought At 31 years old and 30 seasons old, all he needs to seal his legacy as hockey’s greatest player is to top the NHL for the first time.
“We’re excited,” McDavid said. “We’ve worked hard to get to this position and it’s a great opportunity for our group and we’re excited about it.”
___
AP NHL Playoffs: https://apnews.com/hub/stanley-cup And https://www.apnews.com/hub/NHL