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Connor McDavid is the best hockey player on the planet, but he’s still waiting for the day his name ends up etched on the Stanley Cup. The Oilers have come painfully close to hoisting that trophy two years in a row, and one of those losses was debilitating to the point where he decided to bail on his own bachelor party because he was so torn up.
A number of NHL players have earned the “Generational Talent” label as a prospect, and Connor McDavid has certainly lived up to the hype he was surrounded with when the Oilers selected him with the first overall pick in the 2015 NHL Draft.
The forward arrived in Edmonton as the Oilers were in the midst of what ended up being a ten-year postseason drought and at the end of a dismal stretch where the franchise was down bad to the point where they were partially credited with a rule change that prevents teams from landing the first overall pick more than two times in the span of five years.
The man known as “McJesus” was an instrumental figure in helping the Oilers turn things around. Since making his debut in 2015, he’s led the league in points five times, earned the Ted Lindsay Award on four occasions and the Hart Memorial Trophy on three, and secured the Conn Smythe Trophy for his performance in the playoffs in 2024.
That last one was bittersweet, as McDavid was just one of six players who have won that honor as a member of the team that ended up losing in the Stanley Cup Final. He declined to accept it after the Oilers fell to the Panthers for what ended up being the first of back-to-back losses to Florida in the last round, and the defeat apparently put a huge damper on what was supposed to be a joyous occasion in the immediate wake of the series.
Connor McDavid abandoned his bachelor party after two days because he couldn’t get over a loss in the Stanley Cup Final
At this point, the drop in the Oilers logo has become emblematic of the tears McDavid has shed as a member of the team that has seemed to slowly but surely break his will due to its inability to get over the hump despite having one of the best rosters in the NHL over the past few years.
Prior to the start of the current season, McDavid sent a message to the franchise by signing an incredibly team-friendly two-year deal worth $25 million, which was designed to give them more flexibility to surround him with talent to win a Stanley Cup while providing him with a chance to explore free agency if they’re ultimately unable to take advantage.
On Monday, McDavid got pretty candid about his current mentality in a piece for The Players’ Tribune where he bluntly stated, “I just want to win something again.”
He also discussed the toll the aforementioned loss to the Panthers in 2024 took on him while discussing the bachelor party that had been purposefully scheduled for right after the end of the Final that year, saying:
“My buddies had planned my bachelor party a few days after the last possible game of the season. We happened to be in it. And we happened to lose it.
So a few days after the game me and my buddies were on a plane to the Bahamas. I was not fun to be around. Looking back, I almost have to laugh now. Because, man, it was just a weird trip.
We tried to play golf and it rained. So we sat around having a few beers at the clubhouse, and just talking about how sad we were about the series. We left after two nights.”
The Oilers are currently sitting in fifth place in the Western Conference with 64 points and have an 82% chance to make the playoffs.
It does not look like they’ll have the opporunity to lose to Florida in the Final for a third year in a row when you consider the Panthers are currently on track to miss the postseason entirely, but plenty of things will need to fall into place if they want to get redemption this season.