SUNRISE-. An advantage of being the captain of a team of the NHL It’s this: If your team wins a championship, you receive perhaps the highest honor in sports.
You can be the player who accepts the Copa Stanley on the ice after the game.
Will it be Connor McDavid on behalf of the Edmonton Oilers, seeking their sixth title but first since 1990? Will it be Aleksander Barkov on behalf of the Florida Panthers, looking for the first title in the history of the franchise? The answer comes Monday night, when the Oilers and Panthers play Game 7 of a Stanley Cup Final that was all Florida at the beginning, all Edmonton since then, and now one final game will decide everything.
“Obviously, it’s not an ordinary game,” said McDavid, who is generally considered the best player in hockey right now and is probably the favorite to win the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP. “Everyone understands that. But you have to make it as common as possible in your head.”
It will not be a common game. It is the seventh game, the last game of the season and the finale of a series that has been crazy; Florida won the first three games, then Edmonton won the next three games, all of them comfortably, too, to continue avoiding elimination.
The stakes couldn’t be higher.
Florida is trying to avoid becoming the second team in NHL history to take a 3-0 lead in the title series and not win the Stanley Cup; Detroit blew such a lead against Toronto in 1942.
Edmonton is trying to become the first Canadian-based team to win the Cup since 1993, an issue of such national importance north of the border that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau wrote “All of Canada is behind you. Let’s bring the Cup to home” to the Oilers on social media when the series was starting. It is the longest drought for Canada in Cup history.
“We won three, they won three,” Panthers forward Matthew Tkachuk said. “Both teams have a chance… Very exciting. There is desperation on both sides. It all comes down to this”.
When the game is over, the Cup will be taken to the ice. NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman will say a few words and then present it to the winning captain before he skates to begin the celebration with the newly crowned champions.
Will it be McDavid? Will it be Barkov? The moment they’ve dreamed of since they started putting on their skates as kids is here, and only one of them will get it on Monday night.
“It all comes down to that last one,” Panthers defenseman Brandon Montour said, “and it’s going to be fun.”
Source: AP
