BLOG: McDavid's leadership elevating Oilers efforts in Stanley Cup Final

EDMONTON, AB – The Oilers leaders are leading the charge, and Connor McDavid is going above and beyond to help guide his side to a rare and often thought-to-be-impossible reverse sweep in the Stanley Cup Final.

The de facto leader both on and off the ice for the Oilers has been locked in during the Stanley Cup Playoffs, doing everything necessary over the final stretch of the Final to help raise the bar inside the locker room when it matters most as the Blue & Orange try to come back from a 3-0 deficit in the Final for only the second time in NHL history (1942 Toronto Maple Leafs).

“It starts with your best players,” Head Coach Kris Knoblauch said. “If your best players are going and playing well, everyone else follows.

“If you're in the dressing room and looking across at your leaders and you're not sure if they're ready to play, whether they're nervous or struggling or whatever, that puts a lot of doubt in your team. But when you look across and you see Stuart Skinner playing as well as he is, and Connor McDavid putting up back-to-back four-point games, that gives your team a lot of confidence and your best players do that.

“Everyone else is like, ‘Okay, they've got it. They're our best players and they're ready to play.’ It just gives confidence throughout the dressing room.”

The Oilers have a long list of elite options who can take over a game at any given moment, but the contributions of their captain have been nothing short of sensational in the Stanley Cup Final, beginning with his back-to-back four-point nights in Games 4 & 5 of the series that marked the first time it’s happened in the Final in NHL history – ahead of names like Wayne Gretzky, Mark Messier, Mario Lemieux and more historic playoff performers.

McDavid’s eight points in the last two games are the most over a two-game span in NHL history, and the captain is only two points away from matching Gretzky’s record from 1988 for the most points in a Final (13) after already surpassing the Great One for the fourth-most points in a single playoff campaign (42) with eight goals and 34 assists on Tuesday night.

During that do-or-die Game 6 in Sunrise, McDavid produced two power-play assists – one on an incredible 1 vs. 4 rush and back-door feed to Corey Perry – and two goals, including the empty-netter that capped off their 5-3 victory to drag the Panthers back to Oil Country for another six-hour flight from Florida.

Over 12 potential series-clinching games in his career, McDavid has 23 points (8G, 15A), showing when Edmonton's backs are against the wall, he rises to the occasion.

"I think the first thing is that he loves the game. I don't think you can be exceptional at anything you do unless you absolutely love what you're doing, and he loves playing hockey," Knoblauch said. "Obviously, there's some talent that he inherited. A lot of it though, he had to work and improve on. I think that's the most important thing. I think he just is a very competitive person who also wants to win, and wants to be the best. So between his love and passion, I think that just allows him to rise up and make those plays at significant times."

There's what he does on the ice, and then, there's everything else that comes with being a captain off it.

While McDavid's demeanour might be quiet and unassuming, he leads by example and speaks up when necessary. When he speaks, his delivery is direct, and everyone listens.

Forward Corey Perry, who was the benefactor of McDavid's incredible solo effort in the second period of Tuesday's win-or-go-home win at Amerant Bank Arena with the Stanley Cup in the building, said on Thursday that his presence in the locker room is one of the most underappreciated aspects of McDavid's once-in-a-generation tool chests as the out-and-out best player in the world.

"Well, everybody knows what he does on the ice," he said. "A tremendous world-class player. You see his demeanour and the way he plays. He just goes out and plays, and he lets his play do the talking. It's not like he's in the room yelling and screaming to get everybody going. As you guys know, he's a pretty quiet guy, but he's always in the middle of something. He's always around, he's always talking, but he's not yelling and screaming. He's just there."

Above all, he instills confidence in every one of his teammates even when the going gets tough, and Stuart Skinner can tell you all about that.

"I could sit here and probably talk about this guy for a solid amount of time," Skinner said. "Off the ice, the way that he presents himself and how hard working he is, but I think the big thing is how he just communicates to us on a day-to-day basis in the locker room. He's got so much confidence in us and obviously is a hell of a player.

"Just for me personally, he gives me a ton of confidence. No matter what happens in the game, whether I let in five or whether I get a shutout, he's always in my corner. He's always patting me on the back and telling me that he believes in me. And then besides that, he always lets me win on the plane when we play games [laughs]. So it's always a lot of fun when that happens. I get to chirp him a little bit, too, so yeah. He's an amazing guy. I could talk about him for a very long time."