With just over a day left in one of the most exciting Stanley Cup Final series in the last two decades, it’s clear that the real winner was NHL and hockey fans.
Which doesn’t take anything away from the Florida Panthers. They are being lent Lord Stanley’s prized chalice, and rightly so. Rare is the franchise that can endure the most devastating defeats, as the Panthers did in last season’s finale, only to come back and ascend to the ranks of champions. These Panthers joined Wayne Gretzky’s Edmonton Oilers (1984) and Sidney Crosby’s Pittsburgh Penguins (2009) in accomplishing that feat in the modern era.
Historic company, by the way.
But the NHL, in desperate need of a big win after spending most of this decade fending off public relations wounds and wandering through the wilderness that were those strange COVID-altered seasons, actually comes out victorious.
The Panthers were a good story a year ago, an eighth-place finish that clawed their way to the finals. Before that race, they weren’t a factor.
Not anymore.
The Panthers don’t play in Miami, but they are South Florida’s hockey club. And this Cup victory should forever tie the Panthers to the 18th-ranked television market in the United States. That’s a big win for NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman, especially after he had to leave No. 11 market Phoenix when the Coyotes were traded to Salt Lake City before these playoffs.
The Panthers are finally here after 30 seasons, which is good business for the NHL.
So is the league’s best player, Connor McDavid, who appears and excels in the Cup final in his ninth season. The wait for McDavid, a true generational player among the ranks of Gretzky, Mario Lemieux, Eric Lindros, Alex Ovechkin and Crosby, seemed like an eternity for hockey fans.
He’s been the best for a while, but he’s flown under the radar of casual sports fans. That’s partly because he plays in Edmonton. The city’s hockey fans are intense and intelligent, but their passion does nothing for the casual American sports public. That says more about the NHL’s inability to come close to the popularity of the NFL, NBA, MLB and college football in America than the Oilers or their rabid fans.
But perception is reality, and the Oilers, even with McDavid, only recently became a team. American television rights holders Turner Sports and KeynoteUSA began to take center stage.
McDavid gave those stations no choice over the past two months. Not only did he lead the Oilers to the Cup final, but he did it in impressive fashion. He provided an individual postseason for the ages.
There’s no shame in finishing behind Gretzky and Lemieux in individual postseason scoring, as McDavid did with his 42 points. If anything, his dazzling display of dominance emboldened his case for being among the all-time greats.
His win at Conn Smythe was justifiable because that trophy goes to the most valuable player in the playoffs. Sure, he failed to score a goal in any of the Oilers’ final four losses, but…well, there’s a redemption arc in that, too. This postseason belonged to him almost as much as it belonged to the Panthers, and there is tangible value in him falling short of the ultimate prize.
His Oilers will be on American television more than ever next season. His quest for the Cup is more compelling than it was two days ago because we all saw him reach for the thin air but be denied the trophy he covets most.
If this were pro wrestling and it was scripted, McDavid coming this close only to have the Cup snatched away from him in a tight Game 7 would be Part 1 of a two-part story. Part 2 would end, appropriately a year later, with his legacy-cementing triumph.
Most all-time greats don’t win the Cup on their first opportunity. Few have waited as long as McDavid.
He’s not Crosby. Just as Crosby was not Lemieux and Lemieux was not Gretzky. But those four men are the faces of the NHL to casual fans for the past four decades. Only Lemieux waited as long as McDavid to win the Cup. Like McDavid, Gretzky and Crosby had to overcome the pain of losing in a final before winning the biggest trophy in team sports.
The parallel that can be drawn between Crosby and McDavid is that Crosby’s seemingly inevitable conclusion of winning the Cup was made even more memorable because we saw him lose in the finals. If Crosby’s Penguins had beaten the Red Wings in 2008, he probably would have been less identifiable to die-hard and casual fans.
Anointed by Gretzky as “The Next One,” Crosby scored 100 points as a heralded rookie and won the Hart and Art Ross trophies in his second year. A Cup win in his third season would have been a stretch.
Losing in the Cup final made him a sympathetic figure outside of Pittsburgh. Aside from a few places (Philadelphia, Washington and Detroit among them), the crowd was behind Crosby and the Penguins when they returned to the Finals in 2009 for a rematch with the Red Wings. He was the new face of hockey, but we had seen him devastated watching the Red Wings skate at his home rink 12 months earlier.
A sympathetic superstar is great for business, especially for a league that often lacks positive attention, or at least anything to attract non-hockey fans.
The great season was not easy for Crosby and his Penguins, who were unable to maintain a good start. His coach was fired the day after Valentine’s Day. They were down 2-0 in the playoff series against the Capitals and Red Wings, and he was injured in Game 7 of the finals in Detroit.
It was too much.
He became part of a hero’s incredible quest when Bettman presented him with the Cup at Joe Louis Arena on June 12, 2009. Everything that happened next for Crosby grew his legend and earned him a seat at the GOAT table that included Gretzky, Lemieux, Bobby Orr. and Gordie Howe.
McDavid, the most talented hockey player since Lemieux, has already done enough to earn a seat near where the big boys dine. He deserves to eat at the top table too, but he needs to win the Cup to claim his seat, just like Ovechkin did.
If anything, it’s Ovechkin, not Crosby, who should have come to mind when watching McDavid’s Oilers cruise to a victory of hockey immortality on Monday night.
Ovechkin’s Cup quest, one his coach said would validate his place in hockey history, was as long as it was demoralizing. His best Capitals teams kept running into Crosby’s Penguins, and he didn’t even make the finals until his 13th season.
He made the most of that opportunity. Ovechkin’s long-awaited Cup victory remains unforgettable, and it was enough to silence critics who insisted that he was a scorer but not a winner.
Along the way, he also became a sympathetic figure who we wanted to have his moment. While we had always watched Ovechkin because of his fascinating talent, we got involved because we wanted to see a generational talent successfully finish his epic Cup quest.
Like Gretzky and Crosby, McDavid failed in his first final. Like Lemieux and Ovechkin, McDavid is enduring the torture of waiting for his silver moment.
Once he wins the Cup, McDavid will become a little less interesting because he will go from the current hockey god to one of the greatest of all time.
Fair? Not precisely. But we tend to move quickly on to what’s next.
McDavid occupies a unique position at this point in his career. He is what he is now and what follows. He’s a marketing bonanza, if the NHL can figure out how to capitalize on his newfound appeal.
His pain was palpable Monday night. He has never seemed more human. It has never been easier to support him than after that loss.
The Panthers own the Cup and South Florida should be a viable hockey market for a long time. McDavid’s greatness was revealed to everyone, but it was not enough to complete his journey. That was the best result in the league going forward.
If McDavid’s journey hasn’t hooked you by now, nothing will.
As many Cup champions have said, they remember the journey more than the result. We are not different.
(Photo by Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin: Jamie Sabau//Keynote USA/Getty Images)
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