The first on-ice Stanley Cup celebration that Connor McDavid can conjure up from his youth was 2004, when Vincent Lecavalier and the Tampa Bay Lightning beat Calgary in seven games. Born in 1997, McDavid was all of seven years-old. And to be honest, the memory is still a bit misty.
Like an entire generation however, the heir to the throne of “Best Player in Hockey” wasn’t even born the last time a Canadian team won the Stanley Cup. (Hint: the Montreal Canadiens in 1993.)
“I don’t even know what happens when a Canadian team wins the Cup,” McDavid wondered aloud this week. “Do you go to the White House? Do you go to Parliament? I don’t even know what it is that you do.”
Well, here’s hoping he finds out soonest.
As the 2017-18 season dawns, so too does fresh (and legitimate) hope for a Stanley Cup parade down Jasper Ave. in Edmonton, Bay St. in Toronto, Rue Ste.-Catherine in Montreal or perhaps even in Calgary, with a mullet popping out of the lead car of the parade.
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We’re good at hockey again, Canada. Or, more accurately, we’ve finally got some hockey executives who are good at building hockey teams, after that paralyzing spring of 2016 when not a single Canadian team qualified for the National Hockey League’s post-season.
At the head of the line is Edmonton, where Canada’s most futile rebuild over the past decade has emerged as this country’s leading contender to return Lord Stanley’s spittoon to its homeland.
“It’s exciting,” said McDavid. “Now, it’s a long ways down the road, a lot of things that could happen, and there’s a lot of hard work. But there are a lot of good Canadian teams. Look at the team we’re playing (on Opening Night), Calgary. They’re a real good team. Toronto, they’ve got a good chance…”
Of course, you know what they say about potential, right? It means you haven’t done anything yet.
You can apply that to McDavid’s team, no doubt. But no more or less than that maxim applies to Auston Matthews’ club in Toronto, or any other Canadian team — outside of the Vancouver Canucks, who were a powerhouse within this past decade.
“I don’t think about other teams. I think about us,” spat Leafs GM Lou Lamoriello, in an interview with the Toronto Sun’s Steve Simmons. “You should come to work each and every day with the maximum commitment and the maximum drive. I don’t worry about the end result. We’re competing against ourselves to be the best at what we do.”
The difference today is, “the best” the Leafs can do will be characterized in playoff rounds. Not ticket sales, TV ratings or merchandise moved.
Two seasons ago, Ottawa, Montreal and Toronto occupied three of the last four spots in the Atlantic, while the Oilers, Flames and Canucks were cemented in the bottom three places in the Pacific.
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With season openers set for Wednesday, the Sens, Leafs and Habs could very well usurp the top three spots in the Atlantic. While Winnipeg is fighting to make the playoffs in the Central, and Vancouver is in a full rebuild, it is quite conceivable that the first Battle of Alberta since 1991 could take place in May with the Pacific division title on the line.
Certainly, with the acquisition of Travis Hamonic, then Mike Smith, then Jaromir Jagr, the Flames are acting very much like a team with plans to contend.
“(The message is) that (the team) wants to win and you’re excited about the chance of having a really good team,” Flames left-winger Kris Versteeg told the Calgary media. “(Treliving)’s been doing that all off-season, going out and getting guys like Smith and Hamonic. You felt the energy … a lot of guys are excited about having a really good team.
“They’re giving us the pieces now it’s up to us to play and put it all together.”
One guy who has seen this movie before is Oilers coach Todd McLellan, whose San Jose Sharks used to be picked as Cup contenders every year, yet never made it to the fourth round when he was behind the bench.
Now he’s got another “on-paper” favourite in Edmonton, after coming to within one win of a Conference Final last season.
“We’ve earned the right to be confident, and people are talking about us that way, but in my opinion it just makes it more difficult,” McLellan said. “It’s easy to play when there’s not a lot of pressure on you and expectations are fairly low. When people begin to paint a target on you, and you have to perform with that target on your back — night in, night out — the scrutiny begins.
“When it’s raining and the storm has arrived, and things aren’t going so well for us, how do we react? How do we behave? (Is) our leadership group proper? Do we dig in? Do we start pointing fingers at each other? Blaming each other?
“That’s what those elite teams go through year in and year out. The really good ones overcome it.”
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To these eyes the Oilers, with an ever-improving McDavid, are Canada’s best bet. They’ve got plenty of backing from coast-to-coast, but the one-two punch of McDavid and Leon Draisaitl — plus the goaltending of Cam Talbot — puts the Oilers at the top of the Canadian heap.
“We believe in ourselves, as we should,” McDavid said. “Last year was a good season for everyone, but we understand how hard it is. There are so many different things that can go wrong, and you need a lot of bounces to go your way.
“But we’re ready. Everyone feels confident.”
