from Ben Shpigel at the New York Times,

At stoplights around town, motorists honk at the owner of a 2009 black Ford F-150 and snap photographs of its license plate, the one that reads, “McDavid,” in red uppercase letters. Then they speed up, straining to see the driver through the window.

Could it be? Could it really be Connor McDavid, the 19-year-old prodigy charged with restoring the woebegone Edmonton Oilers to prominence?

Because he is polite, the driver, who is not McDavid but rather a 31-year-old part-owner of a plumbing and heating company named Raffaele Papaianni, always smiles and waves at those hoping to glimpse hockey royalty. And why not? Like them, he just wanted to believe again.

Even if it is tempered, optimism does abound throughout northern Alberta, where 10 consecutive postseasons have passed without the Oilers’ presence, the longest current streak in the N.H.L. Across that decade of misery, masochism and mismanagement, Edmonton toiled through several unsuccessful phases of rebuilding, garnering three No. 1 picks before a fourth gifted them McDavid, a generational talent — “once-in-a-lifetime,” said General Manager Peter Chiarelli — who conjures the greatest Oiler of them all, Wayne Gretzky.

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