Connor McDavid is still stinging from losing Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final by the slimmest of margins. Leon Draisaitl cannot keep thinking about it.
“I’m not sure it’s something that you ever get over, really,” McDavid said. “And time kind of just moves on.”
The NHL now gets to see what two of the best hockey players in the world do now that they are more motivated than ever by the most brutal defeat of their careers.
McDavid, Draisaitl and the Edmonton Oilers are out to avenge losing to Florida by a goal after erasing a 3-0 series deficit, with their sights set on the championship that has eluded them. Draisaitl got a new contract to stay around nine more years, McDavid is expected to get extended next summer, but the focus is on getting the job done now and hoisting the Cup in June - and they are favored to do just that.
“We haven’t gotten the job done yet, which makes it even more special,” Draisaitl said. “We’re going to do this together.”
The oddsmakers are on their side. BetMGM Sportsbook has from the middle of the offseason through opening night had Edmonton as the league’s title favorite at 8-1, ahead of the defending champion Panthers and a pair of Western Conference rivals from the Central Division, Dallas and Colorado.
The Oilers are banking on their latest deep run paving the way to getting over the hump. Florida joined Pittsburgh in 2008-09 as teams in the last two decades to lose in the final and win the next year, which is now Edmonton’s task at hand.
“There’s little learning lessons that they probably applied into the next season, and we’re looking to do the same,” Draisaitl said. “Hopefully we can follow into their footsteps a little bit: lose one, and then the next year win it.”
Longtime executive Ken Holland spoke to players after the final and said it still stuck with him when, as Detroit GM, the Red Wings lost to the Penguins in Game 7 in ’09, even though they won the previous year. Holland and the team parted ways, and Stan Bowman took over running hockey operations in July.
Bowman’s top offseason priority was locking up Draisaitl, which he did in early September for $112 million through 2033 with the highest salary cap hit in league history at $14 million annually. The job is to win now and worry about financial implications later.
“It’s our job to try to surround him with the best players we can and give our team the best chance to win,” Bowman said. “Certainly, there’s going to be challenges in the future, but that’s for us to figure out down the road.”
Edmonton kept most of the group that forged its way to the final, including Corey Perry and trade deadline pickup Adam Henrique, then added veteran forwards Viktor Arvidsson and Jeff Skinner. An August surprise saw the departures of young defenseman Philip Broberg and winger Dylan Holloway when they signed offer sheets with St. Louis that the Oilers declined to match.
McDavid on July 31 would have called it a great offseason. By September, it was less of a ringing endorsement.
“We had to lose some guys along the way, and that’s unfortunate, but that’s the cap system,” said McDavid, who is coming off a 100-assist season and winning the Conn Smythe Trophy as near-unanimous playoff MVP despite losing the Final. “Good teams have good players, and it’s tough to keep them all together and ultimately you lose guys to the system and we lost a couple of guys. … We improved in some areas, and maybe we took a step back in different areas.”
Any step back from a return to the final would be a massive blow, but so would another loss like the one Draisaitl described as gut-wrenching.
“Obviously, there’s a sense of being proud of what we did,” he said. “But at the end of the day, nobody talked about the Edmonton Oilers, right? And our goal and what we all want is the last day of the season for everyone to talk about us.”
Until then, McDavid and Draisaitl plan to let their play do the talking.
“We’ve gathered a lot of experience, a lot of positive signs over our playoff run,” Draisaitl said. “We’re ready to to attack again and apply these messages and apply these moments that we’ve learned along the way last season, the last playoffs, into this season. But, of course, we all know that you have to get there.”
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