Dear Canada

I had one thought when I became captain of the Oilers.

Obviously, when you’re given the C at 19, there's a million things that go through your mind. You start wondering if you can grow a beard. You start thinking about your suits. But the one thing I kept thinking was....

Man, I really gotta move out of my parents’ house now.

I'm supposed to be the leader of a room with all these grown men who have two or three kids. How are they supposed to listen to me when I get back home at night and my mom is like, “Hey. Tough game. I washed your sheets.”

I wanted to be the captain of the Edmonton Oilers. I wanted that pressure. No doubt. But I’d be lying if I said it came naturally to me, or that the weight of it wasn’t heavy.

I remember when things weren’t going our way, and I’d look around the room and think, Geez, we sucked tonight. Somebody has to step up and say something. And a room full of guys would turn their heads, and it would kind of hit me…. Oh, they’re looking at me. 

Now, almost 10 years later, I think about that kid a lot, and how every challenge, every tough night, was a chance to be better than the day before.

Back then, I was lucky we had some great veterans in the room who made life easy on me. Hendricks, Letestu, Sekera. I’m so thankful to those guys. But as I’ve gotten older, and we've had some deep playoff runs, wearing the C means something entirely different now. It’s not enough to put up points or represent the community well. All I want to do is win. It’s all we think about in our room. It’s all we talk about in the offseason. It’s why I get up every morning. It’s why I’ve stayed in Edmonton for more than a decade.

It’s funny, I get this one question all the time now….

“Connor, do you think about your legacy?”

I’m 11 years into my career. Of course I think about my legacy. I want to be remembered as a winner. But not just anywhere. Here. To be in this city during a Cup run, to feel that buzz … it just wouldn’t be the same somewhere else. 

I think there’s this narrative that we’re this unlucky, troubled team. The end result hasn’t been there, but it’s not easy getting to two straight Cup Finals. We really pride ourselves on being good playoff performers, and our room knows what we’re capable of. I believe in this group. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have signed my extension.

Because, if I can be real here for a second, I just want to win something again.

That’s what was so incredible about the 4 Nations last year. When I pulled on my jersey for the final against the U.S., I remembered that it had been eight years since that World Championship gold medal in Moscow. That was the last time I celebrated winning something. Eight years. And so that game against the U.S. in Boston last year … it meant so many different things to me. Representing Canada means everything to me. With not being able to play at the Olympics until this season, it’s been this part of me that’s been missing. Some of my favorite hockey memories ever are with a Canada jersey on. Or even just watching as a fan. 

2010. 2014. I even remember 2002 (sort of). 

Those are core memories for Canadians.

I know a lot of guys around the league feel that way, too. There were guys talking about the 4 Nations a year before the teams were even picked. I think how much we cared came through in that final. When you’ve played in a Game 7 of a Cup Final, you know what tension is. I won’t say that our game against the U.S. was quite there, but it was about as intense as I've ever seen a locker room. I don’t think people quite understand how much that tournament meant to us, the players. 

There’s this moment I’ll never forget. Before the OT started, we were sitting around the dressing room, everyone wanted to just get back out there and drop the puck. And I remember looking around and there was Sid, Marchy, Doughty. And I really just remember how calm they were. They weren’t afraid of the moment. All these legends of the game, just in the zone, tying their laces, re-taping their sticks, locked in. And I had this cool little moment, and I’m sure a lot of the younger guys in that room had the same feeling. Maybe it was the red Canada jerseys. But you just looked at those guys and remembered, “Man, I grew up a fan of you. I watched you on Saturday nights. This is such an honor.” 

In that moment, with everything on the line, I think we all remembered what it was to be a hockey fan. To be a Team Canada fan. To be Canadian.

And then we went out and won it. 

I don’t take any of those moments for granted. It’s all I’ve dreamed about my whole life.

It doesn’t always feel that long ago that I was sitting in our family basement with my dad and brother, Cameron, and listening to the Hockey Night in Canada theme. Ron and Don. The Leafs on a Saturday night. My mom would be making dinner. Cam and I on the couch. Dad liked to sit on the floor for some reason. I remember just being happy, and falling in love with the game. 

You know, I think people have this idea that I was this hockey robot. And, yes, I loved hockey. I loved playing. But I was also just … a normal kid. I played lacrosse. I watched football on Sundays. I ran around the park with my friends and had fun at school and I was just me. And hockey for me was just an extension of all that, if that makes sense. It was just a thing that I loved and that was a part of me. I’d see Mats Sundin make a great play or Darcy Tucker lay a big hit, and I’d just want to go out there and do it myself.

Cam and I would spend hours on rollerblades going at one another. We both hated losing to each other. One day he caught me up high with his stick and to this day it’s still the closest scar I have to my eye. I made sure everybody at his wedding knew about that. But those are such happy memories for me. We’d skate inside, blades still on. Mom hated it. Marks all over the floor. Sweaty boys eating as fast as they could to get back out. And in the winter Cam and I would go straight from school to this pond and go shovel it off. We’d be out there for hours playing posts.

I never felt pressure, or like I had to be somebody.

I was just discovering who I was and who I wanted to be. And I think somewhere along the way, shooting pucks into the plywood of our garage and making long drives for games, I realized that I just wanted to be the best version of myself — to see what I could become. I knew, in hockey, it meant that you have to win. Because I know what it means to win, and what it means if you don’t. So I’ve wanted to win my whole life. It’s who I am.

I remember one year, I was like 11 or 12, and we won like 50 games during a season and lost one. 

On the car ride home, I cried my eyes out to my dad. 

Looking back, of course, it seems ridiculous now. But I remember the pain of losing, and how at times it felt so much worse than the joy of winning. And if I’m honest, I still struggle with that. It’s something I’ve tried to work on a lot these past few seasons. When we lose a game, whether it’s game one of 82 or game 3 of a playoff series, it’s a big deal here. Like I said, I welcome that pressure. But as a player, as a leader, I can’t get too high or too low. And so how do you have fun in an environment like that? I don’t have that answer right now. Sometimes the regular season feels like a grind. I think you’ve seen it in our play this year, in my play. I’m not always proud of that, but I want to be honest here. Because what I can also say is that our room is working really hard. We’re trying to win and have fun and be the team we know we can be. Coach is always telling me to relax, and I don’t always listen to that as much as I should.

There’s a part of me that feels like I shouldn’t relax until we win, or that I shouldn’t write stuff like this until then. But I think it’s important to not be afraid of the scars we have and how close we came. I think it’s important, as a captain, to be a human, and not just a hockey robot. I wish more than anything those finals went another way. It sucks. There’s no other way to put it. It breaks my heart. But the only option you have is to use it as fuel for the fire, and show up the next day to the rink determined to get better.  

I remember after Game 7 in ’24, I had my wedding coming up. My buddies had planned my bachelor party a few days after the last possible game of the season. We happened to be in it. And we happened to lose it. So a few days after the game me and my buddies were on a plane to the Bahamas. I was not fun to be around. Looking back, I almost have to laugh now. Because, man, it was just a weird trip. We tried to play golf and it rained. So we sat around having a few beers at the clubhouse, and just talking about how sad we were about the series. We left after two nights.

I remember sitting there, holding a beer and kind of staring into the distance like in the movies, just thinking back on the last few months like, This isn’t how it was supposed to go.

In some ways, that was one of the most important moments of my career. It put everything in perspective. You have to learn from the bad times. You have to take something from it. 

And what I took from it was this....

I don’t want to play golf. I don’t want to sit by the pool. I don’t want to be in the Bahamas. I don’t need a break, or a fresh start. I just want to be in Edmonton, playing hockey. I want to get back there again, whatever it takes. If that sounds like a robot, then I guess I’m a robot. But I see it differently. It doesn’t feel like work to me. It’s just the game that I love. Ever since I was a little kid, it’s been the same feeling…. It’s like every time you step onto a fresh sheet of ice, even if it’s at 5 o’clock in the morning, you’re just so excited for that Zamboni to come off and for that barn door to swing open so you can hop out onto the ice. 

You hear that first crunch, and you just love it. I still love it, even when it sucks.

Every day is another chance, another opportunity to choose better. I really cannot wait for these Olympics. I’ll be bringing everything I’ve learned to Italy to represent my country. I’ve waited a long time to say that. I don’t think it will really hit me until I get over there. I was on the U17s the first time I wore a Canada jersey, and I’ve dreamt of this moment ever since. Pulling on that sweater, being in a room with the different generations of great players — Sid and Nate and Celebrini and all those guys. It’s such an honor, really. 

I think best-on-best, country-against-country, that’s where hockey becomes something else. It reminds us of the shovels and the snow, the rollerblades and the roadrash. 

I can’t wait to get in that room. I can’t wait to play more hockey.

-Connor