If you’m lucky you never knew and still want to understand true despair, even just to show empathy, look into the eyes of Connor McDavid. Look deep, and see true hopelessness, the fear that the world will never really understand what you are through no fault of your own, the knowledge that your best years will be spent in a freezer-burnt land, that your generation and galactic talent and perhaps will never be more than a furious noise at the dying of the light. That’s Connor McDavid.
McDavid scored five goals and had nine points over four games in the Edmonton Oilers qualifier. While it was on the ice at equal strength, the Oilers had 55 percent of the shot attempts and 65 percent of the expected goals, just shareholders. Unfortunately, McDavid was a tsunami during the series, with no one who could slow down his momentum himself, much less stop him.
And the Oilers lost to the 12-seeded Blackhawks in four games because, unlike Leon Draisaitl and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, the rest of McDavid’s teammates show up to the arena with bundles in hand. They lost to a team with the slowest defense in the league. They lost to a team with without a doubt the most airheaded coach in the league. They lost to a team whose goalkeeper had four practices for the series due to the recovery of COVID-19. This was as much of a hanging curveball as the Oilers could get. Not only did they whiff and spin themselves into the ground, they somehow managed to hit themselves in the gonads on the follow-through.
The greatest player of the generation, who has to illuminate websites and phones every night with highlights and stories of his playoff heroes etched in annals of hockey history, will be back home when the significant baubles are handed out. This was McDavid’s fifth season. The Oilers won one playoff series in that time. And it does not look like it will get any better soon. Even if the Oilers were the team to roll 7s and yet another no. 1 receive pick, it is likely that Alex Lafreniere would somehow be moved in a toad on the plane to Edmonton or simply scream away to the news and join a convent.
Aside from the trio of McDavid, Draisaitl, and Nugent-Hopkins, the Oilers are just an airplane bonyard. At least six strikers skating against the Hawks are AHL-level players. This is the fifth season they have counted on Zack Kassian not to be the brainless giant from every child story ever written, and then act shocked when he turns out to be as whitish as he was last time. James Neal will raise nearly $ 6 million over the next three seasons to stand still and shoot. Only Kailer Yamamoto is under 25 and shows every promise in the future more than an escapee from a fantasy camp.
G / O Media can get a commission
That would be enough of a problem, but the defense is in even less shape. Darnell Nurse once flashed the skill and ability to be a Norris Trophy candidate. He brought the whole series unforgettably stupid, amazing out of position, or somehow both, which is no way to go through life. Kris Russell blocked many shots because he spent 80 percent of the series on his ass. Even Ethan Bear, who had one more than one acceptable rookie season, the puck in his own not deflated for the winning goal of the series and killer late in Game 3. By earning the Oilers colors, anyone and everything turns into something that needs to be powerfully flushed out of your ear.
And yet, anything would (and would have been) more than enough to defeat the Hawks and give McDavid another puncher his chance to make noise in the playoffs, if they had no landscape or goalscoring. Mike Smith has been a man for years, hitting a whopping .902 SV% this season, and hilariously throwing up Game 1 against the Hawks when he could not figure out which way to face it. Mikko Koskinen, who may have given up the game when he chose to wear # 19 for a goalkeeper, is simply “a boy.” The Oilers called for one big save, and they never got one. They never did, they never do, they probably never will. The Oilers once had a goalie, a few years ago. It was Cam Talbot. He wrote her one playoff appearance in the past 15 years. They then ran him into the ground like a dog with a chewing gum until all that was left was the plastic bit that made the crying noise (140 starts over two years). They found no other.
If the hope is that Ken Holland will become the architect of a new and improved Edmonton machine, then they can move the team right now to Portland and give their fans the sweet release of no longer having to endure. Holland has proven himself to be a hot topic since they set limits on how deep he could dive into Mike Illitch’s stock market. Or has no one seen the mongrel hip that the Red Wings are now?
In a world that was ordinary, it would not be McDavid that engineers tomorrow a trade from Edmonton, it would be Gary Bettman. This is the best player to come in a decade or more, and he’s been caught in the NHL’s unlucky airport. He needs to be somewhere where people can see him and show them what the sport is be able to. But that’s not the hockey way, and McDavid will be the loyal employee who solemnly turns up every season to watch his career cross the frozen North Alberta turn, with the only hope that hockey HOCKEYS has more than it ever has to the Oilers on the other side of the coin, for once, for no reason.
But so often you will see it in his eyes, as you did during Game 4. You will see that he knows that there is no escape, there is no hope. There can be no joy as he sees Kassian for the first time in the finals for the 734th time each season, or to see Kris Krisell defend on the blue line like Johnny Henshaw from Airplane! without any of the rage as comedy.
It’s a curse to know your fate.
.
