Connor McDavid is Canadian, Leon Draisaitl is German, tragedies are Greek, and Dreams of a Puck on a Midsummer Night are Shakespearian. And while Shakespeare is the Bard among playwrights, no less a dramatist is Connor McDavid; the NHL’s undauntable warrior poet.
With a lyrical stride and mellifluous stick looping and swirling the puck across the ice just as quill and ink of old composed humanity’s greatest epics, on Wednesday night McDavid (1g, 0a, 1 pt, +1) led the Oilers in their quest to slay the giant that is the Blackhawks; a modern-day Gilgamesh setting out to fell the goliath Humbaba once more. Alas, the Fates cast naught but woe for the Oilers as Blackhawks’ forward Jonathon Toews scored with 1:16 left in the third period, to cut the gordian knot that was a 3-3 tie. The McDavid faithful took the twist ending hard; their only succor to be found at the apex of Edmonton art and culture: a downtown drive-in beer garden set up in an empty lot.
Sitting in an un-airconditioned, Ford F-150 littered with empty cans of Labatt Wildcat, sexagenarian sisters Bernice and Bethany Bevilacqua summed up game 3 of the Oilers-Blackhawks qualifier series in the unvarnished vernacular of their people, “Jesus Christ. They really should have put some port-a-johns around here. You take the wheel Berny, I’m going to crash out in back.”
Offering a more sober take was thinking-man’s Oilers fan, Bruce Buckminster. “There’s something eerily familiar about all of the this,” said Buckminster. “The Oilers sinking like a bunch of submarines…a hotel connected to shops, restaurants, and a hockey rink…women sleeping in trucks like they are beds…Ho. Ly. Sh**. We’re all in the god-damned West Edmonton Mall!”
Before Buckminster could continue, he was interrupted as Bernice Bevilacqua pulled around. “You’re damn right, now how about a trip to Fantasyland?” “Those dentures?” replied Buckminster. “Nevermind, surprise me.”
Witness to the tawdry scene was Oilers deadline acquisition, and former Redwing, Andreas Athanasiou who, long after the game had ended, stood staring through the fence enclosing the NHL’s quarantine bubble. Whispered, Athanasiou, into the hot summer night’s air,
“I recall my days as free as that,
to skate and to score points;
This heat, that smell, these deluded fans,
Have me longing for Detroit.
I live, I find, in this bubble,
A tale no man should be cursed to remember;
An Oiler, though, I should not mind,
We’ll be out long before September.
The Oilers square off against the Blackhawks in the first elimination game of their series on Friday, August 7, at 6:45p.m. ET.