Edmonton Oilers' Connor McDavid skates during practice in Edmonton on June 20. The Edmonton Oilers take on the Florida Panthers in Game 6 of the NHL Stanley Cup finals on Friday.JASON FRANSON/The Canadian Press
Connor McDavid in flight is somewhere between Mikhail Baryshnikov and Evel Knievel, performing delicate feats of dangerous artistry, dancing on steel rails an eighth of an inch wide, at warp speed, while five other men try and fail to flatten him. Or as his teammates say: Just Connor doing Connor things.
But when he steps out of his 200-by-85-foot natural habitat, the most exciting player in the game, and arguably the best player ever, is sometimes criticized for being, well, boring. Fearless on ice, but cautious of speech. Earnest. Taciturn. Reserved.
Canadian.
The Edmonton Oilers are just one game from losing the Stanley Cup finals. That’s where they’ve been since dropping three games in a row to the (talented, disciplined, hard-working) Florida Panthers. But having rallied to win Game 4, and then Game 5, the Oilers are also halfway to the comeback of all comebacks, and claiming the Holy Grail.
Mr. McDavid had eight points in those last two games. He has 42 points so far in the playoffs, which is five shy of Wayne Gretzky’s record.
But I’m not really here to talk hockey. I’m here to talk excellence. People in business and politics could learn a lot from Mr. McDavid and his colleagues.
One of the things that gets Mr. McDavid marked as boring, compared to big mouths in other sports, is that he’s uncomfortable making it about himself. But that’s the culture of hockey, which is a subspecies of Canadian culture.
There’s an old saying that success has a thousand fathers but failure is an orphan. Leaders such as Mr. McDavid flip that script, assigning public credit to others for what went right, while instinctively appropriating more than their fair share of blame for what didn’t. There’s never boasting or self-congratulation.
Watch him, and other hockey leaders, answer questions. It’s the opposite of what’s usually on offer in public life or business. They embrace responsibility for bad outcomes, even for things that aren’t their fault, while deflecting credit to others.
Mr. McDavid and other NHL stars are also more available to the media than most Canadian politicians. When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau sat down with CBC’s Power & Politics the other day, it was a rare thing. The PM used the time to eat the clock, deflecting questions and avoiding giving answers about the latest foreign interference report. It could have been an art installation titled: “Accountability Vacuum ‘24″
Mr. McDavid is obsessively focused on being the best at his job, not at selling how he’s the best. Coming up with quotable quips isn’t his gig. In a world neck deep in marketing, and the marketing of marketing, he embodies competence over salesmanship. Doing your job rather than running your mouth.
Those who think hockey is a bunch of Big Bobby Clobbers should watch an Oilers post-game press conference. Kris Knoblauch, the head coach, comes across as the kind of person you’d trust giving you financial advice, or life advice. The players, most in their 20s, are generally Zen about how the world is always a mix of belief and doubt, ability and luck, such that you sometimes win games you deserved to lose, and vice versa.
As for all-business McJesus, he can spin a line when asked to probe the truths of that business. After the Oilers staved off elimination with a crushing 8-1 victory in Game 4, he was asked to play up what a big deal it was. He declined.
“It’s just one win,” he said. “That’s all it is. Doesn’t matter if you score eight or you score one, it’s just one win. We’ve got to go to Florida and do a job and drag them back to Alberta.”
Having gone to Florida and done the job, forcing the Panthers to endure another seven-hour flight to a Friday-night battle in Edmonton, he was asked, post-game, how it feels to have more points in a playoff than anyone other than Mr. Gretzky or Mario Lemieux.
“Any time you’re compared or in the same realm as those two, it’s always a good thing,” he allowed, but immediately pivoted back to the team, and the matter at hand: winning another game.
“It’s not possible without everybody, as [teammate Zach Hyman] alluded to,” he said. “We’re glad it’s going to go one more day, but that’s all we’ve earned here: another day, another flight.”
Like Mr. Gretzky and Sidney Crosby, Mr. McDavid is the latest in the mould of quiet, diligent, self-effacing and spectacularly excellent Canadian leaders. They’re not just role models on the ice.