Toronto and New York insiders speculate on McDavid leaving Edmonton Oilers. Seriously?

No sooner had the Edmonton Oilers fought their way to their second consecutive Stanley Cup Final than hockey columnists in New York and Toronto fired up their laptops this weekend to speculate on McDavid signing his next contract with the Rangers or the Maple Leafs.

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First came an over-the-top headline from the New York Post: “The Connor McDavid free agency question that hangs over the Oilers’ Stanley Cup run.”

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The article was more tepid, with long-time hockey columnist Larry Brooks writing, “The question is whether No. 97 would be more or less incentivized to leave Edmonton as a free agent next summer, and follow the Messier Route to Broadway with or without a championship. Or maybe McDavid is committed for life, will sign an extension without fuss or muss this July, and thus would become the first franchise icon to go wire to wire in Alberta.”

That same day Bruce Arthur of The Toronto Star dug into the ongoing fantasy of McDavid signing with the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Wrote Arthur: “One of the great quiet hopes in Toronto was always that Edmonton would be incompetent enough — or would stay incompetent enough, after one playoff series in the first six seasons of McDavid and Leon Draisaitl — that McDavid, a proud son of Thornhill, would want to come home…. That dream, of course, doesn’t die. McDavid is signed through next season.”

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Arthur continued: “So why would he leave? If he wins in Edmonton the journey is complete, but would you leave Draisaitl for Matthews, who isn’t as reliable as a co-star? Would you leave Evan Bouchard for Rielly, who isn’t as productive a flawed talent at the back? The Oilers have won nine playoff series in the past four years, and are getting more depth scoring this year. The Leafs, meanwhile, are probably more than a Sam Bennett away from being killers. No, the only hope now is that after dragging Edmonton to a Cup with Draisaitl and company, McDavid decides to climb the tallest mountain: to rescue his hometown team from its self-inflicted torture and become as immortal as any hockey player has ever been. But he may already be on the road to that place, right where he is.”

My take

1. It’s fair to wonder if McDavid will sign in Edmonton. Oilers fans ask themselves the same question, even as there are all kinds of signals that McDavid will stay, such as good friends and loyal teammates such as Leon Draisaitl and Darnell Nurse signing long-term deals here, not to mention the team signing McDavid’s former agent Jeff Jackson as its hockey boss.

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2. All that said, the constant unfounded and hallucinatory nonsense out of Toronto, the universe’s capital of Ontario, about McDavid0-to-the-Leafs can be tedious.

3. It started in 2015 when the Oilers won the draft lottery with McDavid the prize. At once, Toronto sports writers covered themselves in bull dung. Some of them read McDavid’s pensive reaction to the lottery as him not wanting to come to Edmonton. Toronto Sun sportswriter Steve Simmons opined on TSN: “There is a reason that he looked unhappy, it’s because he was unhappy … This isn’t where Connor McDavid wanted to be drafted to.”

On TSN’s panel The Reporters, other veteran Eastern Canadian pundits weighed, egged on by host Dave Hodge’s thinly-veiled disdain for anything associated with Edmonton and the then dismal Oilers.

Said Bruce Arthur (him again): “The Edmonton Oilers are going to have Connor McDavid’s career to play with. This is not good.”

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And Montreal’s Michael Farber: “He just looked so unhappy, he couldn’t even fake being happy about the Oilers… It’s not a good thing for the NHL because Edmonton on a global scale remains a

The most ridiculous comment belonged to the Hodge, saying “he clearly wanted to be a Buffalo Sabre” and how we “would have seen a different expression on his face if the odds had held up”.

4. More ant-Oilers agitprop abounded at the time. The Oilers were certain to ruin McDavid, some sports commentators argued, starting with (again) Bruce Arthur, who tweeted seconds after the Oilers won the pick: “And that was the day that Connor McDavid was ruined.”

Yahoo.com hockey editor Josh Cooper later fleshed out the critique, writing that Edmonton is “a team that has made a science of messing up top prospects … McDavid is supposedly not the same to a degree, just because of the hype and the extreme level of skill within his body. But really, will he play out any differently than the other three ( Edmonton first overall picks, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Taylor Hall and Nail Yakupov)?”

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5. If you thought the mind-reading and body language hallucinations were bad, Toronto sports commentator Jeff Blair, a Sportsnet columnist, reached a new low with his modest proposal that the NHL should have rigged the draft lottery to gift McDavid to the Maple Leafs. “McDavid would have been of maximum marketing value and would have had the most immediate positive impact in Toronto,” said Blair.

Toronto is a rich hockey market that deserved McDavid, he added. : “The Maple Leafs have bankrolled the NHL for a long time. … It would have been nice to get a McBone thrown in their direction, you know? Professional sports is about entertainment and marketing and money and TV and such. Fairness sometimes sucks. Connor McDavid should be a Maple Leaf, and everyone knows it – including McDavid himself.”

6. The burbling picked up again in 2019 when the Oilers were down and out, costing then GM Peter Chiarelli his job.  Having made the division finals in 2017, Chiarelli’s Oilers crashed in 2017-18 and 2018-19, largely due to untimely major injuries to Edmonton’s top two d-men, Oscar Klefbom and Andrej Sekera.

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Justin Bourne, the otherwise reasonable senior hockey columnist with of The Athletic at time, said on Toronto radio he hoped McDavid would ask out from Edmonton.  “You know he wants to…. I’m sure he wants to get the hell out of there but there’s not really a way to do it without creating some LeBron James-esque fire storm with the decision. I would love to see it. That would be great theatre, wouldn’t it?… All I know is I really want this to happen.”

7. Bourne wasn’t alone in Toronto in 2019 trying to stick the knife in. The same Bruce Arthur piped in: “We’ll need suction cups and ropes, flashlights and hacksaws. We’ll need a balaclava or two, and a plan. Because it’s time to start thinking about freeing Connor McDavid.”

Arthur continued: “Connor McDavid doesn’t deserve this. He shouldn’t be trapped in hockey hell. He hasn’t even hinted he wants anything else; he’s a hockey player under contract, after all. He took the money, though less than he could have…. But the franchise is wasting a singular career. This is not arguable. The Oilers have made the playoffs once in McDavid’s first three years because they ran a goalie on a hot streak out there 73 times, and Edmonton outscored opponents 77-47 at 5-on-5 with McDavid on the ice.”

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8. The last major gasp of Toronto’s McDavid envy came after Winnipeg beat Edmonton in the first round of the 2021 playoffs.

First, we had Breakfast Television host Sid Seixeiro of Toronto, who used to be on the Toronto Sports Network, infamously saying: “Connor McDavid’s not going to put up with this much longer.”

Then there was the imperious Cathal Kelly of Toronto’s national newspaper, the Globe & Mail, pushing McDavid to do his bidding: “If McDavid wants out of Edmonton, it’s on him to make that happen. He should do that. He’d be doing everyone involved a favour.”

And if McDavid should reject the command of The Cathal to force a trade? It would apparently be McDavid’s doom: “As long as they have the best player in the known galaxy, the Oilers can continue being operatic failures. People will still pay to see him play. Maybe becoming the new Marcel Dionne and making eight figures is enough for McDavid. Let’s hope so. Because that’s where he’s headed.”

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9. What did all this anti-Edmonton Oilers sniping and McDavid doom-speak get Toronto? A boat load of bad karma, I’ll suggest. The Leafs have flunked out of the playoffs repeatedly, while the Oilers won two series in 2022, a series in 2023, three series in 2024 and three series so far in 2025.

Edmonton didn’t ruin McDavid. He and other players give thanks to Oilers fans for being the best and loudest in the league, and there’s nothing but praise from the players for owner Daryl Katz.

Would a Stanley Cup win for McDavid in Edmonton be nice? You bet.

But not because I want to lord it over Toronto fans and writers.

In the end, I’ve met enough great Toronto fans and seen enough excellent reporting from some Toronto sports commentators not to have any kind of major grudge against the Leafs.

10. This brings me back to this latest round of agitation. The New York Post headline gave me a chuckle, as did the Toronto Star column by Arthur.

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McDavid’s contract status is in no way hanging over this playoff run. It’s not been discussed at all by anyone in the media and is rarely mentioned on-line. The focus is on one thing only: Edmonton’s quest to win its first Stanley Cup since the Gretzky/Messier era.

11. As for Arthur’s conjecture that McDavid might well have a special place in his heart for the Leafs and Toronto, I can’t answer to that. But if McDavid wants to challenge for more Stanley Cups in his remaining peak or near peak seasons why would he go to Toronto? All due respect, that team lacks several key ingredients for winning, namely a bunch of big forwards who can hit and forecheck and a bunch of smart d-men who can ably defend and move the pucks like magicians.

Toronto was too purist to bring in players like tarnished vets Evander Kane and Corey Perry and not smart enough to keep its hands on a fantastic player like Zach Hyman. Those kinds of mistakes are being paid in full by Leafs fans.

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12. And the Rangers? Do their star players buy-in to playing unselfish, team-oriented defensive hockey? It takes years for some players to finally get it through their heads they must play defence as fanatically as they attack. Some players never learn this fact about winning hockey. Does McDavid want to teach these one-way players? Or does he want to stick with a group of players in Edmonton who have already learned this lesson?

13. If you think I’m an Edmonton homer (I am) who can’t see straight on this matter (I admit to bias), here’s what Stan “The Maven” Fischler has to say on the matter. Fischler is a long-time New York hockey writer who would love to see McDavid follow in the skating strides of Mark Messier and Wayne Gretzky to New York.

But not to be, Fischler says, giving five reasons, that McDavid is comfortable and adored in Edmonton, that he’s not a Broadway type who needs a larger stage to display his talents, that he loves playing with Draisaitl, that Jackson is running the team and his old junior coach Kris Knoblauch is head coach, and that the Oilers are a potential dynasty team. “Bottom Line: In a short time Connor will give his official ‘Regards to Broadway’ and sign a permanent deal with the Oilers!”

At the Cult of Hockey

LEAVINS: Coach addresses Connor McDavid leaving practice early as Edmonton Oilers prepare for the Stanley Cup Final

STAPLES: ‘Almost perfection’: major Edmonton doubter now raves about Oilers

STAPLES: ‘The Oilers time has come’: NHL’s elder statesmen Cherry and Fischler pick Edmonton

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