SUNRISE, Fla. -- Connor McDavid used the phrase Saturday night, and teammate Connor Brown echoed it Tuesday morning.
“Drag them back to Alberta.”
Has that become a mantra for the Edmonton Oilers?
“No,” McDavid said Tuesday morning, surrounded by a group of reporters. “It’s just, I mean, it’s what we’ve got to do. You guys have been doing the flight.”
The reporters laughed. A direct flight from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to Edmonton is 2,583 miles, the farthest between two cities in the Cup Final in NHL history.
The Oilers avoided elimination with an 8-1 win at home in Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Final on Saturday.
Win Game 5 at Amerant Bank Arena on Tuesday (8 p.m. ET; ABC, ESPN+, SN, TVAS, CBC), and they’ll force the Florida Panthers to take another five-hour, 44-minute flight to Edmonton for Game 6 on Friday.
“You guys know what it’s like,” McDavid continued. “It’s not the most enjoyable flight. Just make them go on one more plane ride, one more flight. That’s all we can really do.”
McDavid, the Oilers captain and No. 1 center, leads the Stanley Cup Playoffs with 38 points (six goals, 32 assists). The only players in NHL history who have had more points in a playoff year are Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux.
Gretzky had 47 points (17 goals, 30 assists) for the Oilers in 1985. Lemieux had 44 (16 goals, 28 assists) for the Pittsburgh Penguins in 1991. Gretzky also had 43 (12 goals, 31 assists) for the Oilers in 1988, 40 (15 goals, 25 assists) for the Los Angeles Kings in 1993 and 38 (12 goals, 26 assists) for the Oilers in 1983.
McDavid led the Oilers with four points (one goal, three assists) and broke Gretzky’s record of 31 assists in a playoff year in Game 4. He had three assists in the first three games, in which the Oilers were outscored 11-4.
“I feel like we’ve generated looks, we’ve created chances and it just hasn’t gone in,” McDavid said. “That’s not an excuse or anything. That’s just the way it’s gone, and we’ve got to find a way to score goals.
“Just because the other night it went in doesn’t really change anything. We’ve liked parts of our game and know that there’s parts of our game we need to clean up and keep building on. If we do those things, we’ll be all right.”
The Oilers still have work to do on the power play. They are 1-for-16 in the series, and their lone goal came on a 5-on-3 in Game 4. But they took advantage of the Panthers’ aggressiveness in Game 4 by stretching the ice.
“If you can find a way to back them off any way, that’s real positive,” McDavid said.
The Oilers also did a better job of limiting the giveaways that led to goals against earlier in the series.
“If they’re going to score a goal, make them earn it, at least,” McDavid said. “You can’t give them the freebies.”
This will be McDavid’s 99th game of the season, including 76 in the regular season and 23 in the playoffs. Yet, instead of resting Tuesday morning, he was on the ice for an optional skate.
“Like I said, long flights, lots of treatment,” he said. “I don’t want to be flat.”
Even facing a 3-1 deficit, this isn’t a drag to him.
The Oilers can become the fourth team to force a Game 6 after trailing 3-0 in the Cup Final. Ultimately, they want to become the second team to win the Cup after trailing 3-0 in the Cup Final, following the 1942 Toronto Maple Leafs, who did it against the Detroit Red Wings.
“It’s exciting, fun to be a part of,” he said. “There’s nothing else we’d rather be doing than right here, playing hockey, so we don’t want that to end, and we’re excited about the opportunity to go win a game tonight.”
