No team has come back from 0-3 down in the Stanley Cup Final since 1942. The Oilers could do just that while becoming the NHL’s first Canadian champion in more than 30 years
No NHL team has come back from 3-0 down to win a Stanley Cup Final since the Toronto Maple Leafs did it against the Detroit Red Wings in April 1942. Now, 82 years later, the Edmonton Oilers may change that history. On Monday night on the edge of the Everglades, the Oilers will face off against the Florida Panthers in Game 7 and try to win their fourth straight to take the Cup and become the first Canadian NHL champions since the Montreal Canadiens in 1993. If it goes the Oilers’ way, the game will most likely be crowned one of the NHL’s all-time best – or at least one of the most memorable in league history. And the Oilers captain, a generational talent, will have come back to where his career with the team began.
26 June 2015 was a Friday and there was a buzz in the BT&T Center in Sunrise, Florida, home (still, under a different name) of the Panthers. It was NHL draft night, and the assumed No 1 pick was an 18-year-old from north of Toronto who’d lit up the Ontario Hockey League for three years and led Canada to a World Junior Championship the previous winter. Connor McDavid had been playing on another level his entire life, allowed to skate at age six with the nine-year olds and granted “exceptional status” to enter the OHL at age 15, a year early, where he became the most decorated player in the league’s history.
