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22 hours ago
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With the Olympics gold medal match loss, Connor McDavid has yet again fallen short of winning the ultimate prize at a tournament. Fans started buzzing about how the Edmonton Oilers legend was 'always the bridesmaid, never the bride'. While these chirps may have come at the height of the Americans winning the gold medal after 46 years, Team USA and New Jersey Devils' Jack Hughes knew that McDavid was still the best player out there.
Oilers legend still gets some love amid loss
Hughes ended up scoring the gold medal-winning goal against Team Canada. He will always remain as a legend in all of America and with the Devils. But, he was tasked with a really tough task of guarding McDavid all night. Prior to his insane goal, he had to shut the Oilers legend one last time too.
He got real on how difficult the task was because of the Canadian star's prowess on the ice, via Dan Rosen of NHL.com.
"When the best player in the world, maybe ever, comes down on you in overtime in the gold medal game and you’re a forward, my first thought was ‘I have got to gap up. Then I was like, ‘I can’t gap up, he’ll just blow right by me.’ So, I just sunk in and hopefully he can’t get around me because there’s not enough space in between me and the net. And that’s honestly kind of what happened," he declared.
Hughes' effort only came out of instinct because of what was at stake and who skated down towards him. McDavid was eventually named the Most Valuable Player for men's hockey at the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics. This came after he ran the Canadian offense as much as he could up until the gold medal game. The Oilers legend scored two goals while also dishing out 11 assists in the tournament.
The bane of the best players in their field is the constant challenge of opposing players leveling up when coming across them. Hopefully, McDavid is able to dispel the 'always the bridesmaid, never the bride' narrative once he returns with the Oilers.
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