Connor McDavid shows winning desire with Players' Tribune letter

The Milan Cortina 2026 Olympics hit the ice on Wednesday, but plenty of eyes won’t be tuning in until next week, when the best men’s hockey players in the world make their way back to the most significant international sporting stage for the first time since 2014. 

For some, like Sidney Crosby and Drew Doughty, the 2026 Games are nothing but a triumphant return, but for others, like Edmonton Oilers superstar Connor McDavid, there’s a chance for this Team Canada experience to be an international coming-out party in front of a far-reaching audience than seen at the North American-focused 4 Nations Face-Off. 

On Tuesday’s episode of Daily Faceoff Live, The Sheet’s Jeff Marek joined co-hosts Tyler Yaremchuk and Carter Hutton to break down McDavid’s letter of intent in The Players’ Tribune. 

Here are some highlights from McDavid's post:

"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. ...

"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 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."

Carter Hutton: It’s motivating, right, as we’re looking into the Olympics. For me, it brings back childhood memories of watching Olympic hockey and international play, best-on-best, and how much it means. When you take away the money, and you take away the fame, this is just playing for your country in the jersey, and I think that’s where he is at. I think for him, it’s a candid look at how badly he wants to win. 

We debate Olympic rosters, so much right? He talks about going into overtime in that 4 Nations Face-Off, with Sidney Crosby, Brad Marchand and Drew Doughty. He talks about sitting in the room and looking around at those veteran guys before they went into overtime, and just having an ease of calmness come over him, knowing that they were going to get the job done. As we debate who should be on the team and who shouldn’t, there’s value that doesn’t show up on a stat sheet, and I think McDavid is the greatest player in the world right now, and he’s telling you what those guys do to you, mentally, physically, heading into those games. I think that’s a value that is on the outside, sometimes you don’t really see.

Jeff Marek: He has the intensity to win, and let’s not forget here too, one of the things when you get to this point in his career,  when he’s talking about looking around the room and seeing all those players — what do they all have in common? What does this team, the Canada roster, sort of all have in common? Rings. Look at all the rings, right? To me, it was that reinforcement of what this guy is chasing. Jack Eichel has a Stanley Cup ring, Sidney Crosby, Nathan MacKinnon, go look around the room. 

To me, reading between the lines of what McDavid was saying is that he wants to be around winners. He hasn’t. He never won the OHL cup, right? That was a big one when he played U16 hockey; he lost to Robby Fabbri’s team, the Mississauga Rebels, at that point. In the OHL, he didn’t win the J. Ross Robertson Cup; he never got to the Memorial Cup; and so far, he hasn’t won the Stanley Cup. As much as he’s always been the best player in every league he’s ever been in, it’s not as if winning has followed him. I still think it burns inside them. As much as this sort of was like a ‘rah rah Olympics’ kind of thing for him, I think it was more that he’s driven to write his legacy. That’s what he’s all about, writing the legacy, and he can’t write a legacy unless he has a win.

You can catch the complete breakdown of McDavid’s letter and the rest of Tuesday’s Daily Faceoff Live episode here…