“Coach is always telling me to relax, and I don’t always listen to that as much as I should. There’s a part of me that feels like I shouldn’t relax until we win.” — Connor McDavid, in The Players’ Tribune.
EDMONTON — A chilled, loose Connor McDavid. Joking around, having a laugh.
At the lake in July? Maybe.
But in his natural habitat — a hockey rink in Milan, where he is the letter-bearing, on-ice leader of a Team Canada that is preparing to step out of the tunnel into the Olympic gold medal game?
Where is he on the world stage? On a Connor McDavid legacy mission?
Yeah, there won’t be a lot of yuks with No. 97 over the next 18 hours or so, we’re betting.
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Watch the Canada-USA gold-medal game on Sportsnet
Arch-rivals Canada and the United States are set to face off for a gold medal in the first best-on-best Olympic men’s hockey tournament in 12 years. Watch the game on Sportsnet and Sportsnet+ Sunday at 8 a.m. ET / 5 a.m. PT.
“I’m sure he’s having fun on the inside,” offers long-time teammate Darnell Nurse. “I don’t think you commit yourself that much to something that you don’t love.”
The aforementioned coach, Kris Knoblauch, has to admit: “He’s a very serious person.”
As a journalist who has been trying to get a smile, perhaps a slightly irreverent or humourous quote out of McDavid for over a decade now, we can attest: Jonathan Toews — a.k.a. Captain Serious — has nothing on this guy.
Our guess is, as McDavid stretches through his pregame routine and then settles into his stall to gear up on Sunday in Milan, the descriptor ‘all business’ will be a vast understatement.
“If you ask me how Connor is going to be,” began Oilers teammate Zach Hyman, “you saw him after the (Finland) game, a clip of him and Nate (MacKinnon). Everybody else is cheering, and they’re just stone-faced. Like, ‘The job’s not done.’
“That’s just how he is, right? You develop that, by being in big moments,” Hyman explains. “I remember our first time going to the Final. We were all so excited after every round. Now it’s just part of it.
“You’ve just got to win.”
You can try to get teammates here in Edmonton to leak some juicy tidbit about a private moment from before a big game. Some speech, some action, perhaps a little tweak of the usual gameday routine that McDavid used in Edmonton that he may employ Sunday in Milan.
But if that exists, they’re not sharing it.
“His excitement and passion,” is what Nurse would rather talk about. “He just has a way to elevate his game in every moment, to make the most of it and enjoy it. It’s always fun to watch him go out there and do his thing. Just being himself.”
Back in Edmonton, the respect for their captain runs deep. No one is letting a journalist in on McDavid’s world. Not until McDavid opens the gates first.
Not even the coach.
“How he is in the dressing room? I don’t know,” Knoblauch said. “But I know this is something he’s been waiting to do for a long time, to play in the Olympics, and he doesn’t want it to just be an experience. He wants it to be a very positive experience, and part of that is winning gold and playing well.
“The higher the stakes for the game, there’s more preparation. More focus.”
In a way, McDavid has been here before.
Is there really any difference, from a ‘wanting to perform’ perspective, between Sunday’s showdown against Team USA and a Game 7 of a Stanley Cup Final against Florida?
“They’re apples and oranges, but they’re both massive,” Hyman decides. “What’s the same about them, I would imagine, is just the intense amount of pressure — internal pressure — on the Olympic stage. External pressure, with the weight of an entire country on you. These guys have been through it in the last year, with the 4 Nations, a lot of them. So there’s a familiarity to the moment.”
McDavid could not complete the mission in consecutive Stanley Cup Finals. But after a so-so 4 Nations Face-Off tournament, he found his place, scoring the tournament-winning goal.
At his first-ever Olympics, McDavid has played at a never-before-seen level, setting the Olympic tournament record (with NHL participation) with13 points in five games. He has been a firehose of high-danger chances for, distributing pass after pass for prime scoring opportunities, game after game.
In a tournament of the world’s best players, McDavid rides atop the field.
A couple of weeks ago, Hyman told us this: “The way I put it is, if you watch our team practice, everybody kind of looks the same. But there’s one guy who looks different. And no matter what room or ice surface you put him on, that’s always going to be the case.”
That statement stands in Milan, where he has been the best of the best.
“In this tournament, it’s pretty clear that he’s the guy,” Hyman agreed. “I don’t know if there was any debate before… But regardless of Sunday’s outcome, he is the best player in the world.”
McDavid’s career will not be complete until he hoists a Stanley Cup. There is no arguing that. If you want to lay those two losses to Florida at his feet, fill yer boots, as they say out West.
Inside the Oilers’ room, however, there is some emptiness that they have not been able to complete that mission for McDavid. That he has done everything he could be asked to do, and if everyone had just had a little more in support…
But for now, an Olympic gold medal will have to do.
“He deserves this, he deserves to win. Canada deserves it,” said Hyman. “He is doing everything in his power.
“I hope he has a massive game Sunday, I hope they win, and I hope he gets that notch in his belt.”
