‘Means the world’: Connor McDavid plays Canadian hero
Connor McDavid wasn’t having a particularly good night until, in a flash, he was having the greatest night.
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BOSTON — Connor McDavid wasn’t having a particularly good night until, in a flash, he was having the greatest night.
Next goal wins.
Winner takes all.
Shiny trophy on the line.
The best hockey player on the planet wouldn’t even need to scroll back eight months to recall a similar situation.
Except this time was different.
This time McDavid’s high-stakes, high-definition moment ended in mobbing, not sobbing.
If the fever dream that was the 4 Nations Face-Off reminded us of anything, it’s that hockey is most certainly a team sport. Which is precisely why McDavid has been hungrily seeking a team win. All those individual accolades are nice but not quite fulfilling.
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Not like scoring a sudden-life winner in what felt like the most important, most intense, and most scrutinized game in a decade. If not longer.
For a team. For a country. For a legacy.
“Just couldn’t believe it, really,” McDavid says, after the champagne sprayed. “Just excited for our group. Honestly, everybody was so dug in. It starts months and months ago, with management going out and picking the team, coaching staff coming together, and then obviously the players doing what we do. It’s been a big production, and it’s just sweet to have it all come together.”
A storybook ending for the good guys back home and the villains here in Boston, where Team Canada’s 3-2 comeback victory over the deepest and most talented Team USA in history felt not only scripted but necessary.
“I just hope Canada is proud, because every player in that room is proud to be a Canadian,” says head coach Jon Cooper, between sips of the Canadian suds sloshing in his Styrofoam coffee cup.
“Did we need a win? Not only our team, but Canada needed a win. The players bared that on their shoulders, and they took it seriously. This one was different. This wasn’t a win for themselves. This was a win for 40-plus million people, and the guys knew it, and they delivered.”
McDavid’s top line, which was so lethal in Monday’s win over Finland, didn’t have it. He bobbled passes and spent too much of the game’s first half in his own end.
“I was not very good all night,” McDavid says. “All that was going through my mind was: Keep going.”
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So, as the Americans seized an advantage, as the throaty locals kickstarted a beautiful “John-ny! Hoc-key!” chants, Cooper adjusted on the fly. He promoted Mitch Marner to McDavid’s line and watched the Maple Leaf set up two goals.
“Mitch had legs tonight,” Cooper explains.
After a flurry of don’t-let-in-the-next-one saves by Jordan Binnington, Cale Makar gathered a puck in the attacking zone and began a set play from the right flank.
Makar spotted Marner deep in the left corner and fired a hard rim.
“I saw that there was nobody in the slot on Davo and was hoping that Marns would make that play,” Makar says. “The second he got it, I was like, ‘Yep, there we go.’
“I was hoping he’d take the shot and not facilitate it.”
The play, McDavid explains, is designed to shake a shooter free in the high slot.
“It’s kind of that box-and-one system. The centreman and the D-men can kind of go. So, if they get crossed up, that spot can be open. And Mitchy, you did a great job of finding it,” McDavid says.
“I mean, it’s so subtle. Your average hockey fan is not going to appreciate how impressive that is to pick the puck up off the wall like that, so calmly, and make a great play. Have his head up, draw two guys to him, and dish in the middle.”
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McDavid finished the dish with a no-hesitation laser past a dialled-in Connor Hellebuyck.
So what if he didn’t bring his A-game? McDavid brought his eh? game.
“Just to see the reaction. Just to know what it means to us. I know it’s a quick tournament, and it’s not an Olympic gold medal or anything like that, but it means the world to our group,” McDavid says.
When Cooper is asked about the man who froze the clock and triggered a shower of sweaty gloves and expensive sticks and the most patriotic of group hugs, the coach talks about the willingness of all his all-stars to play with a fourth-liner’s mentality.
“The egos, there were none. And guys like Connor who could stroll in and say, ‘Give me the ice, give me this, give me that’? Never,” Cooper says. “And when you have leaders and players of his talent cheer as loud for the guys that are playing in front of him while he’s not on the ice, that kind of says something about how special he is. And that was what was special about this team.”
Some may frame McDavid’s best-on-best OT championship goal as a passing of the torch, a harkening back to captain Sidney Crosby’s 2010 touchstone.
Neither man buys that.
“Well, I think you’re gonna see Sid in 12 months,” McDavid says. “So, I don’t see a passing of any torch.”
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“I don’t think of it that way,” says Crosby, who takes another chisel into the sport’s Mount Rushmore. “I’m just really happy he scored. He couldn’t be more deserving of an opportunity in that moment.
“To be involved with this group, I’m just really grateful. And proud that he was able to get a big moment like that. But just really happy that we won.”
McDavid describes the lightning-fast, lightning-rod 4 Nations as jumping from the dog days straight into a Stanley Cup Final.
So, how will it feel to go from what so many described as the fastest and biggest game of their lives to a Saturday afternoon against the rebuilding Flyers?
“It’s going to be a bit of a challenge,” McDavid smiled. “I think we play in, like, 36 hours, so it’s gonna be a quick turnaround. With that being said, I’m excited to get back with the guys. We had a great team there (in Edmonton). We’re chasing down something special, too.”
Any chance the 4 Nations hero takes Saturday’s Oilers game off?
“We’ll see how late this night goes,” McDavid quips. He’s having fun for a beat.
Then the champion’s smile tightens.
“But, no, I don’t intend to.”
Fox’s Fast Five
• Charlie McAvoy blasting USA’s goal song “Free Bird” on the drive home out of Massachusetts General Hospital, then surprising his teammates by reading out the starting lineup is the stuff of cheesy movie scenes. And we’re eating it up.
• When Thomas Harley cancelled Cabo and parachuted in as an emergency replacement, Mark Stone pulled the 23-year-old aside for a calming word.
“We’re all nervous,” Stone assured the D-man.
“That did help a little bit. But it’s still hockey at the end of the day, and that’s what I do,” says Harley, who appeared in both U.S. matches and set up MacKinnon’s goal Thursday.
“It was pretty crazy. Like, it’s definitely the coolest experience I’ve had playing. But the first 10 seconds was definitely eye-opening for me, kind of wondering what I got myself into.”
• Up until his warmup interview with NHL Network, I was a big Brock Faber guy.
Maybe one day he’ll regret telling a national audience that he hates Canada and chalk it up to immaturity.
A superb defenceman, no question. But one wonders how his Canadian captain, Jared Spurgeon, and his Canadian goalie, Marc-Andre Fleury, feel hearing those comments back in Minnesota.
• Crummy night for the Winnipeg Jets who don’t play net.
Canada’s Josh Morrissey, who’s played great, was a surprise scratch due to illness. Had to be killing him not to play.
And 30-goal American Kyle Connor got healthy scratched after coach Mike Sullivan described his performance as “a mixed bag,” noting he hadn’t driven to the inside enough.
• Strong showing by the Maple Leafs.
Auston Matthews (two) and Mitch Marner (two) combined for four of the game’s five primary assists. Canada scored two OT goals in this tournament, and Marner was a factor in both. Is he… clutch?
“Here I was sitting on the beach, and they’re grinding away. Best players in the world workin’ their butts off,” Leafs teammate Jake McCabe told reporters back in Toronto.
Surely, they won’t be in the lineup Saturday versus Carolina.
“You got somebody who’s gonna go in and play?” coach Craig Berube quipped. “As of right now, they’re playing the game. These are big games.”
Sure. But it all feels relative now.
