Connor McDavid is, bar none, one of the faces of hockey, if not the face. You’d be hard-pressed to find a serious argument against him being the best player in the NHL. But if the Edmonton Oilers fall to the Florida Panthers in the Stanley Cup Final for the second straight year, the conversation shifts. It won’t just be about how good McDavid is. It’ll be about whether he can win the big one.
And there will be questions about his future in Edmonton, too.
According to ESPN’s Steve Levy, there are already whispers about McDavid’s long-term outlook in Alberta’s capital.
“I think he has to win, Jim, at some point to be amongst the all-time greats,” Levy told Jim Rome on The Jim Rome Show. “It doesn’t have to be this year, but I remember we said the same thing last year, and he wound up not being able to get it done last year. The window is sort of closing. This is an odd one. It’s closing not because of his age but because of his contract status. There’s an awful lot of talk within the sport that if they don’t win this year, McDavid might look elsewhere. He still has a year left on his contract after this season.
“But, if you’re the Oilers and you know you can’t re-sign him, you can’t let him go to free agency and not get anything for the greatest player in the game. So, that sort of speeds up the process. Again, I think he has to win at some point. He’s just so much better than everybody else on the ice. And the best example of that is: you can take a person who’s never seen a hockey game before and take away the name and the number on the back of his jersey, and you’d be able to point him out. ‘Oh, that’s the one.’ He’s just, he’s so different looking than everyone else.”
“There’s a lot of talk within the sport that if they don’t win this year, McDavid might look elsewhere.”@espnSteveLevy on Connor McDavid’s Stanley Cup window with Edmonton. pic.twitter.com/rDoKMHNti4
— Jim Rome (@jimrome) June 17, 2025
Nobody doubts the greatness of Connor McDavid, even if the talk about his ability to win a Cup sometimes makes it seem otherwise. But if the Oilers can’t push this series to a Game 7, all anyone will focus on is that missing championship standing between him and true all-time great status.
He’s 28 years old, so the clock isn’t exactly ticking on his age — at least not yet — but the contract situation in Edmonton and the rumblings Levy mentioned aren’t exactly background noise. That pressure could prompt both McDavid and the Oilers to make some tough decisions sooner rather than later.
But hey, Connor McDavid could drop a hat trick in Game 6, drag the series back to Edmonton, and suddenly none of this matters.