As the NHL gears up for its annual draft on Wednesday and Thursday, Blackhawks fans are looking forward to their team’s future with Connor Bedard, the prospect Chicago is expected to take with the first overall pick.
The last player to generate as much as excitement as Bedard, the Edmonton Oilers’ Connor McDavid, this past winter posted the NHL’s most impressive offensive numbers in years. In a league in which 50 goals and 100 points are rarely achieved milestones of offensive greatness, he tallied 64 goals and 153 points.
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Despite McDavid’s impressive offensive numbers, he and his team remain a cautionary tale for Chicago fans. McDavid was drafted in 2015 and made his NHL debut that fall. And he has played with teammates who also have posted impressive offensive numbers. This season, fellow Oilers Leon Draisaitl and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins both topped the 100-point mark.
However remarkable the team’s offensive output, though, the Oilers made it to only the second round of this year’s playoffs. Edmonton’s current crop of dazzling talents has not reached the Stanley Cup Final, and the Oilers have not won the Cup since 1990.
An organization must do a lot of things right if it is going to win the Stanley Cup. The team that won this year, and eliminated Edmonton in the process, was the Vegas Golden Knights. Among the Knights’ stars is Jack Eichel. In 2015, Eichel was the second pick taken in the draft, after only McDavid.
Even though Eichel is starring now for Vegas, he was drafted by the Buffalo Sabres. As these details suggest, things did not work out for him in Buffalo. In fact, the Sabres never even qualified for the playoffs with Eichel as their franchise player.
The storied history of McDavid’s Oilers offers a still more dramatic demonstration of the limitations of a single player, no matter how talented, hardworking and accomplished. Former Oiler Wayne Gretzky is often regarded as the greatest hockey player ever. The player nicknamed “the Great One” tallied more assists in his career than any other player. He topped 200 points in a single season four times, hit 196 in another and tallied as many as 92 goals in a single season.
Gretzky was the face of the franchise and the best player on four Stanley Cup champions in Edmonton in the 1980s, but he was not those teams’ only phenomenal talent. Those four Cup winners also included 70-goal scorer Jari Kurri, 54-goal scorer Glenn Anderson and 50-goal scorer Mark Messier. Kevin Lowe did not put up explosive offensive numbers, but he was a six-time All-Star defenseman in Edmonton. Paul Coffey scored 48 goals in a single season while playing defense and was part of three Cup winners before the Oilers traded him away in 1987.
In 1988, the Oilers made their historic deal to send Gretzky to the Los Angeles Kings. The teammates the Great One left behind in Edmonton won the Cup again in 1990, before that impressive roster was broken up. Coffey was part of Pittsburgh’s 1991 Stanley Cup championship team. In 1994, Messier, Anderson and Lowe were all part of the New York Rangers’ first Stanley Cup-winning team in more than 50 years.
In other words, Gretzky never won another Cup after leaving Edmonton, but his former Oiler teammates won again without him. One player, even the Great One, is not enough.
So Chicago fans should be excited about the future with Bedard, but they also should be aware that for the Blackhawks organization, the work of building a Stanley Cup champion is just beginning.
John Soares teaches history, including history of sport, at the University of Notre Dame.
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