Connor McDavid's Inability to Win the Big One is Becoming a Growing Problem
The image is hard to shake.
As Jack Hughes flicked his wrists and snapped a puck past Jordan Binnington to send the U.S. into a "first time in 46 years" hockey frenzy, Canadian captain Connor McDavid skated past the crease with an unmistakable look on his face.
A look of frustration. A look of disappointment. A look of what might have been.
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For those who've been paying attention for a while, it's a familiar look.
Because it's not the first time that No. 97—whether wearing a maple leaf or an Edmonton Oilers crest on his sweater—has been on the wrong side of the handshake line.
And the more often it happens, the more impact it has on long-term perception.
With each playoff elimination and every puffy-eyed press conference, the cement hardens around the idea that while McDavid is clearly hockey's best player today and surely among its best ever, his lack of trips to the top step of the podium is no coincidence.
OK, yes, he did win at the World Juniors level with Canada in 2015 and won an IIHF World Championship in 2016. He also scored the winning goal at last year's 4 Nations Face-Off.
Still, the level we're talking about is the highest of the high, where the legends of the game of the have reached: a Stanley Cup and an Olympic gold medal.
Maybe it's fair. Maybe it's not. But it's getting more difficult to ignore.
Though it lasted just 101 seconds and he wasn't on the ice for its entirety, McDavid had fingerprints all over Sunday's decisive OT—from an opening break-in that ended without a shot to a closing one whose change of possession delivered Hughes' hero moment.
The golden gut punch came 250 days after McDavid's Oilers were routed by the Florida Panthers in Game 6 of the 2025 Stanley Cup Final. And another year passed when they'd suffered the same fate, this time in a one-goal Game 7, to the same foe in 2024.
McDavid was the NHL's leading scorer in both deep playoff runs, combining for 75 points in 47 games and earning a Conn Smythe Trophy as the league's playoff MVP. He had 13 points in six games for Team Canada and was named the tournament's best player, too.
Add in the five scoring titles and three regular-season MVPs he's won since arriving in Edmonton as the top pick in the 2015 draft and it's high time for an enlarged trophy room.
Filled, though, with all the baubles except the ones that he's long said matter most.
No gold medal. No Stanley Cup.
No protection from those who'll suggest that where there's smoke created by results, there's statistical fire to back it up.
After all, he was pointless in the decisive game of the 2024 series in Florida, had one goal across the final two games of the second go-round last spring, and, for all the shake, rattling and rolling he'd done in Olympic pool play against Czechia, Switzerland and France, was a composite minus-1 from the quarterfinals through the gold-medal game.
Not exactly the stuff of McSaviors, eh?
And unless it all changes upon a return to North America, that reality won't, either.
McDavid again leads the NHL with 96 points, but his Oilers skidded to the break as close to ninth in their conference as first in their division, making another springtime chase appear doubtful with an aging roster and precious little deal-enabling cap space.
Which means, with just two years left on a contract keeping him in Edmonton, the pressure is squarely on GM Stan Bowman to retool on the fly, before his prized possession decides to try his luck elsewhere—perhaps with new friends he made in Milan—and change his real-time legacy from how it read on Sunday night:
"The most decorated player to never win a thing."
