The Stanley Cup Final begins tonight, and we may be watching the greatest hockey player of all time participate.
Connor McDavid is looking to pass another test, the most important one, on his way to hockey immortality.
This crowning of the 28-year-old McDavid isn’t based on the accumulation of career records. This is just his tenth season. Nor is it because of championships. McDavid is aiming to hoist the Stanley Cup for the first time in the Oilers' rematch with the Panthers.
It’s based on the eyeball test. McDavid has an unparalleled combination of pure speed and incredible skill. He is bigger, faster and as instinctive as Wayne Gretzky. He has already played nearly as long as the injury-plagued Bobby Orr. He isn't as big as Mario Lemieux, but he’s much faster.
The knock on McDavid is that he's missing a championship, but it hasn’t been for a lack of his production. In a much lower-scoring era than when Gretzky and Lemieux played, he is averaging 1.5 points per game, third all-time behind only those greats.
McDavid has scored at an even better pace in the playoffs, 1.58 points per game. Last season, he had 42 points in 25 playoff games, and was one of the rare players to win the Conn Smythe Trophy on the losing team. Like Gretzky had Mark Messier, and Lemieux had Jaromir Jagr, McDavid has an exceptional sidekick in Leon Draisaitl.
The Panthers do present a problem. They play the classic heavy style of hockey, which is best suited for the playoffs, and have their own share of quality players.
But Edmonton has home-ice advantage, which the Oilers didn’t last year. It just seems like time for McDavid.
It’s rare in hockey that a true great doesn’t win a Cup. It’s based on every era from Rocket Richard and Howe to Orr and Guy Lafleur to Gretzky and Lemieux to Sidney Crosby and Alexander Ovechkin.
McDavid showed his chops on the international stage with his huge game-winning goal in the Four Nations tournament. Canada’s world dominance in hockey has been consistently threatened by the United States. And there have been a number of great players from the USA and Europe.
None comes close to McDavid. He is the best player, by far, in the most skilled era of the NHL.
If the Oilers win the Cup, it will solidify what our eyeballs have said all along: McDavid is the best ever.