Michael Bloom

Connor McDavid: “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.” playerstribu.ne/McDavid @cmcdavid97 | @EdmontonOilers | @NHL