SUNRISE, Fla. — The moment Connor McDavid made the Stanley Cup Final stand still — the signature moment, arguably, to this point of his sublime career — came within a playoff beard’s whisker of never happening.
It was Darnell Nurse, not Corey Perry, who was supposed to jump over the boards with an Edmonton Oilers power play winding down in the second period on Tuesday night.
But as McDavid gathered speed through the neutral zone, Nurse yelled, “You go! You go!” to his teammate at the opposite end of the bench and Perry instead found himself on the ice and in prime position to finish off McDavid’s insane 1v3 rush against the Florida Panthers.
Nurse wasn’t awarded an assist or point on the play, but he deserved an “A” for awareness.
“I’m not going to beat a forward down there,” he explained to The Athletic. “So I figured we might as well get one out there.”
Good thing, too.
That stood up as the winning goal in the 5-3 victory that dragged the Panthers back to Alberta and put an exclamation point on a playoff campaign that will end in the coming days with McDavid’s name written all over the NHL’s guide and record book.
He’s completely willed the Oilers back into this series by becoming the first player in the 108-year history of the Stanley Cup Final to deliver back-to-back four-point games — a mind-boggling stat made even more impressive when you consider it happened after his team fell into an 0-3 hole against Florida.
McDavid now sits at 42 points for these playoffs, the fourth-best total ever and still within reach of Wayne Gretzky’s all-time record of 47 from 1985. His 11 points and counting in the Cup Final are only two back of Gretzky’s record from 1988.
It should not surprise anyone to learn that McDavid has already essentially secured the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP even if the Oilers’ season ends with a loss in Game 6 on Friday night or a potential Game 7 next week.
He is lapping the field.
But more than an impressive array of stats or even a prestigious individual honor, it’s the play he made to Perry that’s likely to stand the test of time. McDavid had already delivered an assist and a goal in the second period of Game 5 when he snaked wide around Panthers forward Eetu Luostarinen coming across center ice and busted directly through the outreached sticks of defensemen Dmitry Kulikov and Niko Mikkola, only to deliver a perfect cross-crease pass to his teammate for a tap-in goal.
SCOREY PERRY ON THE POWER PLAY 🚨 pic.twitter.com/zoDq6KpRSK
— Edmonton Oilers (@EdmontonOilers) June 19, 2024
“I watched him go through three guys and then pass it over to me,” said Perry. “I mean I didn’t even yell for it. He just saw me going to the net.”
McDavid processed the entire sequence in a way no one else possibly could. His brain was the only thing moving faster than his feet.
“I’m in that position a lot going back for pucks, I’m on the breakout, bringing it in the zone,” said McDavid. “So it’s something that I look at a lot — how certain guys are playing things. Mikkola has a really long reach and I just tried to work my way through there, and Pers did a great job of working it backdoor.”
For fans of a certain vintage, this was akin to Mario Lemieux going “one against the world” while busting through the Minnesota North Stars to score in Game 2 of the 1991 Stanley Cup Final.
The mere possibility of that kind of moment is part of what made this championship series so compelling from the outset because of what McDavid means to the sport and the nine long years it took him to reach this stage.
In a 32-team league with a hard salary cap, there’s simply no guarantee he’ll ever get back. The stakes are enormous. And yet the best of the best always seem to find a way to meet the moment and rise to the occasion.
“We keep saying he’s the best player in the game, or the best player on the planet, and then when he does that it’s so obvious the difference between him and the very best players,” said ESPN analyst Ray Ferraro, who worked the broadcast from between the benches at ice level. “There’s nowhere to go and he just makes something great happen. The play to Perry, there’s nowhere to go. Except he found the one sliver of light.
“But who else finds it? Nobody.”
Ferraro played more than 1,200 NHL games and has probably broadcast at least that many since hanging up his skates. The best comparison he could draw to the heights McDavid is currently reaching is the way Michael Jordan took the NBA by storm in the 1980s and 1990s.
“He does things physically that other people can’t do,” said Ferraro. “You can’t stand up on him. But you can’t back up. Now what do you do?”
That’s a question for the Panthers to ponder as they make the six-hour flight back north to Edmonton with the pressure being turned up around them.
The Oilers are trying to accomplish the near-impossible by becoming only the second team in NHL history to erase an 0-3 deficit and lift the Stanley Cup, but everything is starting to feel very possible thanks to McDavid.
“What have I not seen from him is probably the (better) question,” said Oilers defenseman Mattias Ekholm. “The guy is the best in the world. There’s just nothing else you can say about him. What I’m most impressed about with him is the bigger the moment, the bigger the performance he puts on.
“We’re on the brink of elimination, and he puts up four points two nights in a row. That’s just him in a nutshell. He just wants to be the guy. He is the guy.”
No. 97 is a must-see and he’s made what remains of this Stanley Cup Final a must-watch.
This is history playing out in real time.
(Photo: Andrew Bershaw / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
