Edmonton Oilers' Connor McDavid takes part in practice in Edmonton on June 5.JASON FRANSON/The Canadian Press
Connor McDavid started playing hockey in the basement of his family’s Southern Ontario home when he was three years old. As he grew up, he always competed against older boys and by the time he was a pre-teen, he was considered the best player in his age group by a country mile.
At 15, he was granted exceptional status by Hockey Canada, which allowed him to play in the OHL a year earlier than normal, and he was the first player selected in the 2012 OHL draft.
After three seasons with the Erie Otters he was being touted as the next Sidney Crosby, who had been his hockey hero. On June 26, 2015 in Sunrise, Fla., the Edmonton Oilers used the first pick in the NHL draft to choose him. He is a blazing-fast skater and a superb stick-handler, passer and shooter.
At 19, he became the youngest team captain in NHL history and now he is considered the best hockey player in the world.
McDavid has achieved almost everything possible in his sport. He has had seven seasons with 100 points or more, has won five Art Ross trophies, three Hart trophies, four Ted Lindsay trophies and one Maurice Richard trophy.
The one thing missing from his résumé is an NHL championship.
Beginning Saturday he will take the ice in the Stanley Cup final – hockey’s signature event – for the first time and is close to fulfilling a dream he has had since he was young. McDavid, 27, is captain of the Oilers, who face the Florida Panthers in the best-of-seven series.
At four years old, McDavid played roller hockey in the basement. Around him he set up stuffed animals and imagined they were spectators.
“He would call up the stairs to me and say, ‘I just scored the winning goal in the Stanley Cup finals,’” his mom, Kelly McDavid, remembered this week. In response, she would yell, “That’s nice dear” in motherly fashion.
A few years later, Connor and his friends would play mini sticks in the basement. The sides would pretend a storage room and bedroom were their dressing quarters, march out and sing O Canada, and then contest Game 7 of the Stanley Cup.
“Even then, that was all he thought about,” Kelly McDavid says.
“When he was a kid, he would watch the Stanley Cup final and always felt a little jealous of the team that won,” his mother says. “He wanted it so badly. This is certainly a dream come true for him.”
This is Connor McDavid’s time to show he is one of hockey’s greats
To get to this point the Oilers beat the Los Angeles Kings, Vancouver Canucks and Dallas Stars during the first three rounds. McDavid leads all players with 31 points in 18 playoff games after finishing third in the league with 132 points in 76 games in the regular season.
His fifth goal in the playoffs, in Game 6 on Sunday against the Stars, was a thing of beauty. Early in the first period he skated through three Dallas defenders, shifted the puck from his forehand to his backhand and then shovelled it past goalie Jake Oettinger. Opposing players slumped and appeared to look confused over what happened. It was so fast the video had to be reviewed several times to comprehend what McDavid had done.
“I’ve seen that play – or at least something like that – numerous times,” says Edmonton coach Kris Knoblauch. From the time McDavid was 16 Knoblauch was his coach in the OHL. “Connor still astonishes me. I think he won’t be able to do it but with that play he astonished me again.”
The Oilers eliminated the Stars in six games but now face a tougher task. The Panthers, who reached the Stanley Cup final last year where they lost to the Vegas Golden Stars, mowed through the Tampa Bay Lightning, Boston Bruins and New York Rangers to earn a berth in this year’s final.
With the first two games on home ice, Florida will have an advantage. There has never been a series in the Stanley Cup finals in which the opponents come from places so geographically apart. It is 4,089 kilometres between Sunrise, Fla., and Edmonton, and the Oilers had to travel first. Florida also has rugged players who don’t hesitate to toss their bodies around.
The Panthers joined the league in 1993 and are still in pursuit of their first Stanley Cup. Edmonton has won five Stanley Cups but none since 1990. The last time it reached the finals was in 2006.
The Oilers have reached the postseason in five successive years and lost in the Western Conference finals in 2021 to the Colorado Avalanche, which went on to win the championship. Last year, Edmonton lost in the second round to Vegas, which also then claimed the Stanley Cup.
The Oilers and Panthers met just twice during the regular season and Florida won both times. They haven’t seen one another, however, in nearly six months.
Edmonton has four of the top points leaders in postseason in McDavid, Leon Draisaitl (28), Evan Bouchard (27) and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins (20). Zach Hyman of the Oilers leads all scorers with 14 goals in 18 games. Draisaitl is second with 10.
They have a lot of weapons but McDavid is the most explosive.
“He is probably the fastest skater in the world so you have to be on the right side of it,” said Matthew Tkachuk, the Panthers hard-knuckle forward. “If you are even with him or behind him he is going to beat you. You have to be in front of him at all times and have layers of support.”
The Oilers are taking on a bigger cause. No Canadian team has won the Stanley Cup since the Montreal Canadiens in 1993.
In Edmonton, fans adore McDavid. After the Game 6 victory he decided to throw a little party so he and fiancée Lauren Kyle stopped at a liquor outlet on the way home. On his way out of the store he was mobbed. One fellow patted him on the back and another helped load a case of beer into his SUV. An online video has gone viral.
Kelly McDavid did not attend Game 5 or 6 against Dallas because she travelled to London, England to see Lauren try on her wedding dress. The couple will get married in Ontario’s cottage country on July 27.
Kelly did watch the games on television, however.
“I couldn’t sit still,” she says of Sunday’s Game 6 ending. “I paced back and forth. It was nine or 10 minutes of hell. I was literally shaking afterwards.”
She has watched her youngest son toil in the NHL for nine years. He is its biggest star but for all of his individual accomplishments he has experienced a lot of disappointment.
“It has definitely been up and down for him,” Kelly says. “As a mother, I have tried to be supportive. He has to go through a mourning stage and won’t want to talk about what happened for a week or two.”
She hopes this year will end differently.
“I’m so excited for him that I couldn’t breathe for the last couple of days,” she says. “I hope we can all take it in and enjoy it. It’s such an accomplishment. It’s amazing.”