from Damien Cox at the Toronto Star,
For his next trick, the fabulous Connor McDavid just might bring the Edmonton Oilers kicking and screaming into the 21st century.
Yep, McDavid is that good.
That’s not to say the Oilers are a backward organization. Nothing could be further from the truth, and that gorgeous rink the taxpayers built for them in downtown Edmonton is certainly in the conversation every time the subject of best NHL arena comes up.
It’s more a case that when it comes to reference points, for a long time now Oiler fans and media have been stuck somewhere between 1984 and 1990, the start point and end point of the NHL’s last true dynasty. If an Oilers team isn’t tough enough, it’s because it doesn’t have Dave Semenko riding shotgun. If an Edmonton goalie doesn’t come through in the clutch, he’s not a money goalie like Grant Fuhr. If the Oilers score six or seven goals in a game, they supposedly remind everyone for one night of the great offensive squads led by Wayne Gretzky, Mark Messier, Paul Coffey and Jari Kurri.
Every team, of course, likes to embrace the best parts of its past. It’s natural. But at a certain point, the past becomes so distant it starts to lose relevance. In the case of the Oilers, comparing the challenges of a 21-team league when everyone used wooden sticks to the current swollen 32-team NHL in which fighting is essentially extinct and everyone can shoot the puck 120 kilometres an hour started to lose relevance quite some time ago.
Those Edmonton teams that featured Gretzky et al were so uniquely entertaining and so high-powered that to some they were always going to be the gold standard for the Oilers.
Until, possibly, now.
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