Despite leading the playoffs in scoring the last two seasons, Connor McDavid couldn’t prevent the Edmonton Oilers losing to the Florida Panthers in the Stanley Cup final both years.Christian Petersen/Getty Images
Every chance they get with him, the media now asks Connor McDavid if he’s going to re-sign in Edmonton. The season’s about to start, and he’s got one year left on his current deal.
McDavid has a few ways of answering this simple question, and they boil down to one confusing answer – yes, but no.
He’d love to, but he has to do “what’s best for me and my family.” He’s “not in a rush to make any decision.” He was at it again during the recent Team Canada get-together, talking like he’s reciting a memorized script.
Hockey people are wondering what it all means. I guess hockey people have never been turned down for a date. McDavid is trying to let Edmonton down easy, before he’s forced to let them down hard.
When any other player – Mitch Marner is a recent example – gets coy in the way McDavid has, it’s fixable because it’s about money. So-and-so pending free agent would love to continue playing for your team, but oh man, the houses in this city are so expensive. How’s he supposed to buy 10 of them? Take whatever number you’re thinking of and add 25 per cent. Then we can talk.
Connor McDavid took part in a Team Canada press conference in Calgary this past week, flanked by two players – Sam Reinhart, left, and Sidney Crosby – who have multiple Stanley Cup championships. Reinhart’s two rings both came at McDavid and the Edmonton Oilers’ expense.Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press
This approach doesn’t work for Edmonton. The starting number for McDavid is just a bit south of the most allowable under the collective bargaining agreement – 20 per cent of the salary cap – and ends up at the maximum. Negotiation-wise, it’s Mark Carney in a room with whatever random American draws the short straw and ends up in Ottawa.
You want a 10-year deal? Done.
You want a two-year deal, and then a re-up when the salary cap jumps? Done.
You want to be paid in crypto, or dinars, or jujubes? Done.
Whatever McDavid wants, done. I don’t know what he pays his agent, but whatever it is, it’s pointless.
McDavid’s been free to re-sign for a couple of months now, and no deal. I guess they could be hammering out the details. Except, what details?
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I suppose he could want a better goalie. Or maybe he wants them to hire his cousin to run the snack counter. Again, the Oilers have shown they will do that. They’ll make his mom the team president if that’s what it takes.
This leaves McDavid in a rhetorical deficit. He’s got nothing to complain about. The cliche he’s settled on is winning. He’d like to win. He wants to see a commitment to winning.
He’s been to two Stanley Cup finals in a row. If winning is the measure of it, there’s only one team he can switch to (Florida), and it can’t afford him. And yet he persists in this less-than-sensible formulation.
This leads to one conclusion – McDavid is quiet quitting Edmonton. Most quiet quitters don’t get asked about it. He will be. Constantly. That make it loud quitting, which is bad for morale.
Could Edmonton Oilers captain Connor McDavid be entering his last season in the Alberta capital?JASON FRANSON/The Canadian Press
McDavid wants the Oilers to show that they are committed to creating a winning culture? Here’s an idea – move as quickly as possible to get some return on the guy who doesn’t want to be on your team.
Again, Marner’s the illustrative example. The Leafs spent years trying to convince Marner – who is no McDavid – to commit. He strung them along, telling porky pies about how much he wanted to stay. They waited until the last moment to get something for their about-to-be worthless asset, and he shivved them.
In the end, Toronto got next to nothing for Marner. I suspect this will turn out to be addition by subtraction, but still. It’s bad business.
The Oilers cannot afford to lose McDavid the same way. The instant he leaves, they go from championship favourite to franchise in mid-rebuild. Based on recent history, that’s not something they’re good at.
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There’s only one sensible thing to do – put it straight up to McDavid. You want to re-sign? Great. What exactly will it take for you to do that? And then you do that. Not in 10 months. Now. Before it becomes the only thing people talk about all season long.
And if you don’t want to re-sign, where do you want to go? Because we can do that, too. We don’t want to, but we will.
Marner wanted to go to Las Vegas. How much better off would the Leafs be if they’d figured that out before the trade deadline?
No player of McDavid’s calibre has not thought about where he wants to go. So ask him. It will cause hurt feelings, but it bulletproofs you for later. When the guy leaves, you can say, ‘We asked him, and he wouldn’t tell us.’
The smart play for both sides is being straight with each other. You can only do this with a generational player, because there’s no advantage to either side in bargaining.
Edmonton general manager Stan Bowman will be hoping his captain Connor McDavid re-signs with the Oilers, or else risk losing him for nothing.Steph Chambers/Getty Images
If McDavid says, ‘I want you to clone Tony Esposito and Larry Robinson’, then okay, great. Buy a cloning start-up. If he says he wants to go to L.A., then figure out a way to do that.
The only mistake here is acting like the team has as much leverage as the player. The Oilers have zero pull in this situation.
So listen to what the guy is not saying. When you tell a friend, ‘I’d love to, but I have to see how things turn out,’ what does that mean? It means you don’t want to.
Or what about you’re tilting in that direction, but you’re in no hurry? It means you don’t want to.
Whatever you actually want to do, you do. Once you get past that, you can have a serious conversation.
But this isn’t the way sports teams operate. The Oilers will not press, and McDavid won’t commit. They’ll have another good season. They probably won’t make the final, because only three teams have done that in the last 40 years, and all of them had won it at least once over that run.
Then McDavid will leave and everyone will say, ‘Should’ve seen that coming.’