SUNRISE, Fla
Connor McDavid admired and looked up to Sidney Crosby as the kind of player he wanted to become one day.
But when McDavid was pretending as a kid to score the goal to win the Stanley Cup, he always imagined himself being in that position.
“You’re not sure you’re ever going to get that opportunity,” McDavid said. “Here we are with that opportunity.”
That opportunity 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 at stake. He and his teammates are now on the verge of completing one of the biggest comebacks in sports history, attempting to block out the ramifications to focus on accomplishing something not done in the NHL since 1942.
“It’s not your ordinary game, everybody understands that, but you’ve got to make it as ordinary as possible in your head,” McDavid said after practice Sunday, the Oilers’ final one of the season. “Our room has done a great job of being at our best in these big moments, and I would expect no different.”
McDavid has been at his best in the biggest moments of his first trip to the Cup final, recording four points apiece in Games 4 and 5 to keep Edmonton from getting swept and then dragging the Panthers back across North America to Alberta for a Game 6 the Oilers won on home ice without him getting on the scoresheet.
The reigning and three-time league MVP has not been held without a point in back-to-back games this entire playoff run, and McDavid is the biggest X-factor on the big stage. Veteran winger Corey Perry, a Cup champion in 2007 who’s in his third final in four years, said McDavid “can do magical things at any point in the game.”
“Every game we go into, we know we have the best player in the world on our side,” said Leon Draisaitl, McDavid’s longtime running mate and an MVP in his own right who assisted on the opening goal in Game 6. “But this league is really, really hard to just go through one player or two or three players. You need a whole team, and I think we’ve shown that.”
