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SUNRISE, FLA. — Connor McDavid had a lot on his mind before Game 7 Monday as the Edmonton Oilers captain but 97 was also looking for a pre-game assist, making sure that his former junior general manager and surrogate grandfather Sherry Bassin was going to be in the building.
McDavid paid for the 84-year-old Bassin and his daughter to come to Florida from Ontario, a thank-you for the good times in Erie when Bassin brought the 15-year-old there. The legendary Bassin also hired Oilers bench boss Kris Knoblauch as his junior coach, so he clearly has an eye for talent.
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“I’m not surprised that Connor would do this for Sherry because of the relationship that they’ve had over the years,” said Knoblauch. “He’s also somebody I consider a friend; he was the one who gave me the opportunity to coach in Erie. I have a lot of respect for him.”
Bassin’s greatest attribute was finding good players and people in junior hockey.
“Sherry has a really good talent for making people feel special. Obviously reaching out to Connor and making him feel special at 15, comfortable, welcoming him to the organization and the city of Erie. He’s very good at that because he likes people, he cares about,” said Knoblauch.
“I saw Sherry connect with a lot of players when I was in Erie. He connected with the superstars that we had and also the players that were role guys who were definitely going to go to school afterwards and didn’t look like they were going to play professional hockey,” said Knoblauch.
Knoblauch may have been dreaming of some NHLer on the road in Imperial, Sask. as a kid but he never was a pro player. He probably didn’t dream of making the right lineup moves in his Game 7, but that’s what he’ll be doing.
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Relaxed as usual.
“I slept in today, got to the rink, we had our meetings, get some exercise in. I’ll burn some energy off,” he said. “I know the coaches, we were talking earlier, we were talking about routines. And I was just having conversation with Jeff Lang, our equipment manager about changing tires — changing a flat under certain circumstances. It’s just a regular day for us.”
Stanley Cup was a ‘a video game for me’: Ekholm
Everybody in a Stanley Cup Final seems to have a story of who they were in their fantasy Game 7 driveway games as kids, but not Mattias Ekholm.
When asked when the Stanley Cup hit his radar, he said if it did, it was a weak signal.
“I don’t even know if I remember clearly when it started,” said the Edmonton Oilers defenceman, “but (NHL) games were on at 2 a.m. in the morning back in Sweden and we didn’t have any social media back growing up. I think we had a weekly show where it was like a half-hour thing when they showed highlights of the NHL”
“Other than that, I didn’t know barely what the Stanley Cup was. It was a video game for me, actually. I started to play that when I was 11-12 years old maybe, where you could win this trophy. I would say around then that I started to dream about it, think about it.”
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“To be honest with you, I was bypassed in my first draft, I wasn’t a high pick or anything like that so to even have a realistic thought about it, it was way later in life. I don’t even know, maybe I was 18, 19, something like that,” said Ekholm, who has become one of the NHL’s best defenceman, certainly a candidate to play for Sweden in the Four Nations Face-off next February and the 2026 Olympics in Italy.
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