MTPS: Connor McDavid Has No One To Blame but Himself
What happened in Edmonton was disappointing, annoying, and utterly predictable. So, why is McDavid acting shocked?
Two things can absolutely be true at the same time:
- No superstar other than Mike Trout has been handicapped more by his front office than Connor McDavid.
- No one forced McDavid to commit to the Edmonton Oilers for another two seasons.
Let's rewind a bit.
It has been a really interesting couple of years for McDavid. Two seasons ago, he joined an ignominious list of five other players to win the Conn Smythe Trophy in a losing effort. I want you to imagine how that feels. It is the league saying, "you are so dominant that there was no one in this series on the winning team who is even close enough that we could justify giving the award to them, but, despite that, your team wasn't good enough to actually win the Stanley Cup."
It is the NHL equivalent of the hot girl that you're really into saying, "I like you, but just as a friend, and hey, is your brother seeing anyone?" Like really, fuck off.
McDavid and his Edmonton Oilers followed that up with another trip to the Stanley Cup Final—another loss to the Florida Panthers, this time without even a Conn Smythe to show for it.
So, needless to say, McDavid probably didn't go into the last offseason a happy camper and was looking forward to the team making moves to improve. Now, all of us here knew where Edmonton's greatest issues where: They couldn't defend and their goaltending was a mess. Stuart Skinner wasn't particularly good in their 2023-24 playoff run, posted a sub .900 save percentage the following season, and in the playoffs it got worse. This was an obvious area to fix, right? Right?!?!?!
Well, Edmonton general manager Stan Bowman had other ideas. Bowman cleared some space by letting veterans like Corey Perry and Connor Brown walk, and sending Evander Kane to the Vancouver Canucks and Viktor Arvidsson to the Boston Bruins. And, lest we forget, he did all of this to clear cap space so that he could extend Evan Bouchard and, a few days before free agency opened, give Trent Frederic an eight year contract worth $30.8 million and carrying a full no-movement clause* for the first four years of the deal.
*Do you have any idea how redundant a no-movement clause is on an eight year, $30.8 million contract for Trent Frederic? A buyout only saves you about $1.7 million over the term of the deal and then you have to carry his dead money on your books until 2040. You could remove the no-movement clause and there's still not a team in the National Hockey League that is trading for Trent Frederic at that money or term.
Anyway, Bowman did sign Jack Roslovic to a really nice bargain contract to try to replace some of the punch up front.
If you're waiting for me to tell you how any of these moves improved Edmonton's obvious deficiencies on defense or in goal, I can't. They didn't.
And McDavid knew this.
