McDavid will shine in prime time for Oilers in West Final, Gretzky says (5/31/22) Connor McDavid's star will shine even brighter for the Edmonton Oilers in the prime-time spotlight of the Western Conference Final, Wayne Gretzky said Tuesday. The Oilers captain will play the Colorado Avalanche in the best-of-7 series that begins with Game 1 in Denver on Tuesday (8 p.m. ET; TNT, CBC, SN, TVAS). Gretzky, the player McDavid is most often compared to, spoke in advance of being on site with the TNT panel for each game of the series and said sports fans will quickly learn to appreciate McDavid's gifts "For Connor, he's in a tough situation and by that I mean he plays a lot of games on the west coast," Gretzky said. "Back in my day, we played a lot of Saturday, Sunday 6 o'clock games so we were on in the east at 8 o'clock. He's playing at lot of 9:30, 10 o'clock eastern games. What I'm trying to say is I don't know if the average fans gets to see him on the nightly basis enough. "In (the Stanley Cup Playoffs), people are going to get to see Connor McDavid and what he brings to the team, what he brings to the game and how good he is and how much fun he is to watch. And I think that if there's any sort of negative toward Connor this year is the fact I'm not sure he got the recognition that he deserved. Yeah, he's in the running for the Hart Trophy (voted as most valuable player of the NHL) and he won the scoring race going away, but people are going to get an opportunity to see him on an every-second-night basis on a normal Eastern time zone." McDavid won the Art Ross Trophy as NHL scoring champion for the fourth time with an NHL career-high 123 points (44 goals, 79 assists) in 80 regular-season games and shares the playoff scoring lead with teammate Leon Draisaitl (26 points; seven goals, 19 assists in 12 games). The marquee matchup in the conference final is McDavid against Nathan MacKinnon, the Avalanche center who's scored a team-high eight goals in 10 playoff games after he had 88 points (32 goals, 56 assists) this season. "This is going to be tremendous exposure not only for Connor but for the National Hockey League," Gretzky said. "Him and Nathan going head-to-head and with guys like Draisaitl, (Cale) Makar, (Gabriel) Landeskog, (Ryan) Nugent-Hopkins, Evander Kane, my goodness this sets up to be a really exciting matchup. Both teams can skate, both teams will play physical. You couldn't ask for a better matchup. This is going to be great hockey and it's going to be led by two of the best players in the game, Nathan and Connor." Gretzky, who had 2,857 points (894 goals, 1,963 assists) in 1,487 NHL games and won the Stanley Cup four times with the Oilers, said McDavid's drive continues to come from an innate understanding that getting better is an everyday thing. "I think it's simple and by simple, I mean, you love the game, right?" Gretzky said. "And if you love the game, you always believe that you can be better the next day. My goodness, Gordie Howe taught me that when I was 11 years old, that you can always learn each and every day. The only thing you can't buy is work ethic. If you look at Bobby Orr, Mario Lemieux, Gordie Howe, Mark Messier, they got better every game and the bigger the game, the better they played. They wanted that responsibility. And that's what Connor's got now."