EDMONTON — “I know my place in that room.”
Does he though? Can anyone — even Connor McDavid himself — truly assess his stature inside a Team Canada dressing room?
When it’s 3-2 for some country that Canada is expected to beat (read: everybody) with five minutes to play, does anyone really have a gauge on how much a roster of Canada’s top players will be calmed by the fact that the best player in that game — the undisputed top player in the world today — is on their side?
Of course, any lineup that includes Nathan MacKinnon, Sidney Crosby, Cale Makar and the rest of Canada’s best is not waiting around passively for McDavid to come to their rescue.
But at this point in his arc — a 29-year-old generational superstar, making up for lost time at his first-ever Olympic tournament — what is it worth for the rest of Team Canada to know that nobody else has what they have? The fastest, most elusive player? The NHL’s top producer?
“Any room he’s in, he’s got the skill set that he just leads from above,” Oilers linemate Zach Hyman said this past week. “The way I put it is, if you watch our team practice, everybody kind of looks the same. But there’s one guy that looks different, and no matter what room or ice surface you put him on, that’s always going to be the case.”
McDavid took us to the threshold of that dressing room door last week when asked if his overtime winner at the 4 Nations a year ago elevated his Team Canada status or changed his Olympic responsibilities in any way. “I know my place in that room,” was his way of telling a reporter that he didn’t need any instruction on how and where to fit into Team Canada.
But he didn’t take us inside that room.
We’ve known McDavid since he was 18. He’s never been one to overshare.
“There’s a lot of great players, a lot of great voices and leaders, and everybody just has to do their part,” he said. “That’s all it is. That’s what makes a team like that special, is everybody can contribute in their own way. And I’m looking to do that.”
His “own way” at 4 Nations came when he scored the tournament-winning goal – the de facto golden goal of a tournament that proved surprisingly awesome, yet was no Olympic Winter Games.
It was a moment in time that has no bearing on what might happen in Milan, that does not somehow position McDavid to be in 2026 what Crosby was in 2010 in Vancouver.
“I just want to win a gold medal,” McDavid said. “That’s the only thing that matters. You know, there’s a lot of great players on that team. Everybody’s gonna play a role. Everyone’s gonna play a part. And the goal is just to win a gold.
“It’s the biggest sporting event in the world, and to do it together with 25 of Canada’s best hockey players. It’s a dream come true. It really is.”
There is the Connor McDavid you hear in an interview, and the Connor McDavid we watch on the ice. It is a stark contrast in confidence, self-assuredness, and (dare we say) … cockiness?
McDavid would never speak to a group of reporters like the guy who attacks four penalty killers off that power-play drop pass entry play. To think you’re going to skate through four qualified NHL players, leaving jock straps a’flying as you score a goal, requires a mix of disrespect and overconfidence.
Yet McDavid has done it multiple times in his career. Because he can.
In short, if you want a measure of where McDavid thinks he sits in this game, or how he plans to affect Team Canada’s chances in Milan, you’ll have to watch him play. Because he’ll never convey that level of self-belief into some microphone, even though he’s a far more intriguing quote today than in years past.
It’s taken a while to get to this point, but he’s here now: ready for his moment and experienced enough to let it unfold organically.
“He’s always kind of high octane. He wants to be the best no matter what,” offers Hyman. “But this is an important year, an Olympic year, and every year you’re getting close to the Stanley Cup — and you don’t win, you have a stronger desire to get back and win.
“The combination of losing now two (Cups) in a row, the Olympics, the 4 Nations… There’s a lot of big, big hockey that he’s played. And big hockey that he’s hoping to play.”
McDavid hits the Olympic break as the NHL’s leading scorer (96 points), on pace for a 136-point season — which would be his second-highest career total. But in the run-up to these Olympics, he had a 20-game points streak that marked perhaps the best 20-game tear of his NHL career.
His 20-game point streak produced 46 points — all things considered, a 20-game skein that has been matched perhaps 17 or 18 times in league history. It was the best quarter-season in McDavid’s career.
To summarize, he is always good. But when he’s at that level of great, even the people standing behind the other team’s bench have to remind themselves not to oooh and aaah at his game.
“You watch 97 play here, and I can’t stand it,” Calgary Flames head coach Ryan Huska said after a recent game. “But as a fan, my God, is he something to watch.
“It’s hard when you’re on a bench trying to coach against him. But you see the talent and the way he can play the game… It’s exciting for us now — when you’re not involved in (the Olympics) — to be able to cheer for players like that.”
For the next two weeks, a population will stow away their local allegiances. Flames, Senators, Canadiens and Canucks will keep their jerseys in the closet, and coalesce around the one Maple Leaf we can all agree on. The red one.
There is one sport that we Canadians can say we are the best in the world at. It is hockey, and it is perhaps the one place we flex as a nation.
The other thing we agree on, begrudgingly for some, is that McDavid is our best player currently.
Sid gets the “C” because that’s just the way it should be, and Nate is everything you could ever want in a hockey player and more.
But Connor McDavid is wearing a Team Canada jersey at an Olympic Games, finally.
That, like Sid in Vancouver, has “lifetime hockey memory” written all over it.