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Edmonton Oilers captain Connor McDavid has won the Conn Smythe Trophy as the most valuable player of the NHL playoffs after an incredible postseason that finished just short of the Stanley Cup playoffs.
The Oilers dropped Game 7 of the Cup final 2-1 to Florida on Monday night as the Panthers won the best of seven series 4-3.
McDavid did not go back out on the ice to receive the individual award.
Edmonton attempted an improbable comeback, winning Game 4 and Game 5 of the series after trailing 3-0 in the final.
The final result did not detract from McDavid’s stellar performance that broke records throughout the postseason.
The 27-year-old star had eight goals and 34 assists to lead the playoffs with 42 points.
McDavid is the sixth player in NHL history to win the Conn Smythe Trophy but not the Stanley Cup.
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He joins Roger Crozier (Detroit Red Wings, 1966), Glenn Hall (St. Louis Blues, 1968), Reggie Leach (Philadelphia Flyers, 1976), Ron Hextall (Philadelphia Flyers, 1987) and Jean-Sebastien Giguere (Anaheim ). Mighty Ducks, 2003).
He is also the second skater from a team that has lost the Stanley Cup to win the award after Leach.
McDavid broke Wayne Gretzky’s playoff record of 31 and fell five points shy of the Big One’s point mark of 47 in a single postseason.
He had four points (one goal, three assists) in Game 4, then did it again (two goals, two assists) in Game 5 to become the first player in Stanley Cup Finals history with consecutive four-point games.
McDavid was also the first in league history with eight points in a two-game span of the same series.
The six-foot-one, 194-pound center is the first player to have four different four-point games in one Stanley Cup playoff run since the Oilers’ glory days in the 1980s.
Gretzky had six four-point games in the playoffs in 1985, while Paul Coffey and Jari Kurri each had four that same year. Mark Messier had four such games in the 1988 playoffs.
No one did before, or since, until McDavid this season.
McDavid finished the year with a career-best 174 points in 101 games, the most by anyone in a single NHL season since Mario Lemieux had 188 points with Pittsburgh in 1995-96.
This is the fourth consecutive season that McDavid has led the NHL in points in regular season and postseason contests combined.
It is the longest such streak since Gretzky, who topped the season scoring list in nine consecutive campaigns spanning from 1979-80 (when he was tied with Marcel Dionne) through 1987-88.
& copy 2024 The Canadian Press
(Except translation, this story has not been edited by achinews staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
source link https://globalnews.ca/news/10585912/connor-mcdavid-conn-smythe-trophy-2024/
