This is Connor McDavid’s opportunity to show he is as great as everyone else thinks he is

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Throughout the 21st century, Canada’s NHL teams have settled into an easy truce. As long as no one succeeds too much, then no one else looks ridiculous.

Whenever the management in one city comes under pressure, they say something along the lines of, ‘It’s not easy to compete in this league’ – as though asking them to do their job is presumptuous of the rest of us.

Then, without saying any names, they’ll nod toward another franchise that can’t do it despite its many advantages. Often, that franchise is the Edmonton Oilers.

The Oilers have the best player in hockey and, on some nights, the second best. They have the pedigree, the facilities, the fan base and the history. There is no hockey box the Oilers do not tick.

One thing they don’t have is a curse. It’s been 34 years since Edmonton won a Stanley Cup. In Canadian terms, that’s basically yesterday.

After Connor McDavid shackled himself to the club for his entire 20s, the Oilers’ window of opportunity seemed to have been nailed open. The team could climb through any time. It was just a matter of getting the mix around McDavid correct.

The mix has been a problem. In Canada, it always is. You could argue that the Canadian NHL teams have produced just one great player over the past 30 years – Patrick Roy.

Roy won a Stanley Cup on his own. That is the measure of it. Everything else is getting high marks on your quarterly assessment. Everything else is just showing up.

These days, the word ‘great’ gets tossed around like a hacky sack. Don’t worry if you miss with it – it’s not going to hurt anyone. It should be hurled at people like a bowling ball. You should fear to get it wrong, because the person you’re hitting with that word could get hurt.

McDavid is a wonderful hockey player, but no matter how many times the guys on the broadcast say it, he’s not a great one. Especially when you put it like that and he’s wearing the uniform he wears.

So far, McDavid is Dale Hawerchuk or Marcel Dionne. He’s a statistical monster whose output has never paid off.

You can’t even pick a player before expansion that he’s like, because all the guys from that era that we now consider great won championships.

Nobody remembers how many goals Jean Béliveau scored (fewer than Hawerchuk and far fewer than Dionne). What we celebrate is his will to win.

Does McDavid have that will? If so, we’ve never seen it.

It is the Canadian way to construct an elaborate scaffolding of excuses around our stars. That’s got something to do with a fear of chasing them down to the United States, where the taxes are lighter and nobody cares if they win.

McDavid is a special recipient of this exceptionalism. On the one hand, people will tell you he belongs on hockey’s Mt. Rushmore. On the other, nothing that goes wrong around him is ever his fault. It’s always someone else who’s ruining things for Mr. Western Hockey. Usually, the goalie.

If it’s not the goalie, it’s the coach or the GM. McDavid has chummed through eight of them in nine seasons. You can’t blame the CEO of hockey ops because they hired McDavid’s agent to do that job.

In essence, the Oilers are now the Edmonton McDavids. But when there’s blame to be handed out, somehow goaltender Stuart Skinner is the one making all the wrong moves.

The real danger to McDavid and the Oilers isn’t the Los Angeles Kings (their first-round opponent). It’s the Canucks, Jets and Leafs.

Eventually, someone is going to get it right. By accident, probably. Canada’s next trip to a Stanley Cup final has ‘too many men on the ice’ or ‘illegal stick’ written all over it.

When that happens, the excuses dry up for everyone else, particularly McDavid.

If another one of the godforsaken franchises from this country can do it, then why can’t the one with the consensus best player in the game? What is the point of a Sidney Crosby or a Mario Lemieux or a Steven Stamkos who doesn’t win?

McDavid doesn’t even have the fig leaf of an Olympic gold. If another Canadian team makes good, he’ll be completely naked out there.

Then the perpetual fear of the migration comes into it. Leon Draisaitl’s contract is up after next year. If he leaves, the Oilers are somewhere between retooling and rebuilding.

McDavid’s forever deal finally ends in 2026. By then, he’ll be about to turn 30, having spent his entire adult life getting slapped around on the Prairie. Middle age – that’s the time a man with options starts California dreaming.

But once McDavid leaves, his chance at greatness is gone. Nobody would think of Bobby Orr as Bobby Orr if he’d won his only Cup in Chicago. You have to do it with the one who brung ya.

So now the Oilers window has been reduced to a manageable number – one. One year. One chance.

Who knows what happens with Draisaitl next year. If he won’t sign, trading him is the best worst option. After that, who knows what happens with McDavid?

All the Oilers know for sure is that they have these two right now, on a mostly healthy team that has shaken off whatever bad humours afflicted them at the beginning of the year. On paper, they are as good as anyone in the West. Plus, they have the only wild card in the deck.

If McDavid is great, there will never be a more opportune moment to show it.

And if he isn’t, the same applies.