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Sat in the darkness of his and Lauren's bedroom, blinds down, curtains pulled tight, Connor McDavid was stuck in a web of his own creation.
Since exiting the playoffs in a spectacularly bad way, an upset to the Ducks of all people, Connor had spent his days simply drifting by, much to the growing concerns of his wife and friends. He had shut himself away in the house for days, rarely leaving the bedroom. Lauren had started bringing water and food to the room, small packs of crackers and biscuits, when it became clear he wouldn't be coming down for food. Each night she curled up beside him, hoping that in the morning he would be a bit more himself, and at first she thought it was working. After a few days of total isolation, he had left the house for the first time. Summoned to Rogers Place, he was gone for hours, and Lauren hoped it would be the beginning of him returning back to his old self, to a normal level of consciousness, but when he returned, it was clear his disassociation had continued throughout his time in the outside world.
Over the next few days, she spoke to Celeste often, detailing the ways her husband was getting worse and hearing how she was faring with her own husband, who was in a spiral of his own. Each time he left home, she hoped he would return a bit more human, but each time, it was to no avail. Locker room clear outs and exit interviews came and went and soon he was home for days on end and the isolation returned. While he stopped going out, work didn't stop, and so he continually got phone calls from the head office, who spoke to him in long and detailed monologues about coaching selections and team changes and all manner of other things, and with which he returned simple sounds of affirmation or small sentences. If she knew what they were discussing, who they had been discussing, what he and Leon were agreeing to approve of, she wouldn't have let it get this far. Her and Celebste were perfectly capable of politely removing their husbands from the situations they end up in, they simply need to know they were happening. Instead, her first hearing of it is getting a message from another WAG who asked her if it was true, if Connor had agreed to hiring him.
In another world Lauren would find out what was happening sooner, would be able to coordinate with Celeste and others and be the ones to make sure her husband and his best friend knew their opinions on the matter and were brought back to the normal world.
This is not that world.
In this world another got to them first.
Connor is sat in the darkness, the bedroom blinds pulled and the curtains closed. Beside him, his phone lay on the bed covers, but he was paying it no attention. Instead he was staring at the wall, deep in his own mind, where he had been for days now.
He knew his disassociation was bad this time, perhaps worse than ever before. It has been weeks since he truly felt in control of his own body. Instead, it had been working on autopilot, taking him to the meetings he needed to go to, to the interviews, dealing with the locker room, taking the phone calls. All of it was going on but Connor wasn't sure he could tell you a single thing he had said or done during any of them.
Connor was numb, truly numb. He knows he is getting asked about things, about the team, and coaching, and decisions, but he is so far gone, so deep in his own head, that he is just agreeing to whatever they put in front of him, whatever they think they need to win the cup.
He turns 30 next year. 30.
He's been in the league since he was 18 and has nothing to show for it. By the time Sid was 30, he already had 3 Stanley Cups and 2 Olympic Gold medals. Connor is 30 and all he has is a silver medal and participation trophies, those truly big wins have eluded him. It is reaching a stage where he is truly open to anything, he goes through the motions and agrees to whatever desperate new ploy the Oilers staff think is going to solve this and get them the cup next season because he has moved beyond anger or frustration, he is truly just numb. He never wants to leave Edmonton, he wants to be an Oiler all his life, but sometimes, in those darkest moments, he does truly wonder what it would be like to be somewhere else. To leave this behind and go somewhere else. It never stays long, he truly does want to win in here, but the thoughts are there.
And so, its in that headspace he stays, on the bed with his knees pulled up in front of him, his arms encircling them, the darkness of the room reflecting the darkness of his mind.
And it is there, as he sits there, that his phone rings.
He lets it ring out, not even paying much attention to it. Lots of people have been ringing him recently, and Connor hasn't spoken to many of them. The calls from management, he takes, but family, friends, even teammates have all been left to ring out and left unanswered. He knows its not what a good captain does but Connor is tired. Tired of everything,
The call finishes and the room is momentarily returned to silence before the phone rings again, same ringtone echoing around the room. He ignores it again until it quietens.
The calls rings out a third time and it is finally enough to break through Connor's disinterest, and so he picks up the phone and sees who is ringing.
Sidney Crosby.
Sidney Crosby is ringing. Sidney Crosby is ringing him
He scrambles to answer, one doesn't leave Sidney Crosby waiting and Connor had already done far too much of that.
"...Hello?" Connor's voice is hoarse from disuse.
"Connor." Sid responds curtly and says nothing further, leaving the two sat in silence, waiting to see who would crack and speak first.
Once it became apparent that Sid would not be breaking the silence, which was unusual for the normally fairly conversational captain, Connor spoke again, "is...is there something I can help you with Sid?"
The silence once again returns and drags on as he waits for Sid's response. He and Sid aren't ones for conversation usually, both send perfunctory catch up texts ,and often talk when physically together, but phone calls are rare. The last time Connor had gotten a call from Sid, it was to tell him he would be handing the captaincy at the Olympics to him, and they both know how well that went. A call from Sid wasn't always a bad thing, but it usually contained something big or important, something Sid didn't think could be contained by a simple text. What it could be when the Oilers were out of contention and Connor hadn't done anything beyond the 4 walls of his home in days, he had no idea.
He would soon come to find out how truly wrong he is.
"Connor Andrew McDavid. You need to wake the fuck up."
The full name was enough to shock a bit more humanity back into Connor's consciousness but the swearing definitely sparked his brain. Sid was a hockey player, swearing wasn't a new thing for him, he wasn't a saint by any measure, but hearing your childhood idol swear, and more specifically swear at you, made you stand at attention and feel like a misbehaving child. Getting full-named, something no one but his mother does, Connor is left spiralling, trying to figure out what he had done to piss off the greatest player in modern Canadian hockey to such a degree that he called him and cussed him out.
Sid continues before he can wonder much further, "you need to wake the fuck up and realise what you are doing, because if this happens, if he comes back to the NHL, it'll be the death of the Oilers, and it will be your fault."
If Connor wasn't already deathly focused in on Sid, those words definitely would have brought his attention squarely to his phone.
"What...Sid, what are you talking about? Who are you talking about?"
"Who?! Who am I talking about?! Who the hell do you think I'm talking about, Connor?" He says his name with distain, a tone Connor has never heard out of his normally calm and collected fellow captain.
Sid continues, cutting off Connor before he could even begin to guess.
"Babock, Connor. I'm talking about the piece of shit on legs that is Mike Babcock. The man your Oilers are about to hire as head coach."
"Ah...right. Him. Yeah."
"Yes, him. You wanna explain to me what is going on in that head of yours and why its going round the league that not only are the Oilers looking to hire him, but that the leadership of your team, ya know, you and Leon, are both in agreement with it?!"
"They uh...um, they came to us and said, ya know, that he's got a good record, he got Canada 2 gold medals and ya know...he's won a cup before-"
"Oh fuck the cup!" Sid yells, completely silencing Connor as he stared at his phone in shock, never thinking he would ever hear a player say those words. He continued before Connor could question him any further, "This isn't about the cup, this is about human fucking decency and how you apparently fucking lack it!"
"He, he, when we met him, he seemed...he seemed alright. Strict but...he was alright."
"Yeah, Connor, to you." Sid's tone was dripping with disdain and condescension, "Mike Babcock will treat his star players like they're gold, he'll be perfect to them. He couldn't start shit with any of us Olympians who worked under him cause every single one of us was a star player for our team. Don't be fooled by how he treats stars, the man is a psychopath who enjoys psychologically torturing anyone he can. And you know that Connor, you've been in this league long enough to see this all happen. Which is why I cannot understand where this has come from."
Connor can't come back with a retort and so Sid continues on without disruption.
"Mike Babcock rejoices in getting to torture and abuse depth players, your 3rd and 4th liners, those guys who don't have big names or big contracts, but who keep the game rolling. He goes after them with glee and he rips them to shreds. You think you can play a game with no 3rd or 4th line Connor? Just you and Leon? Are you all the team needs?"
"...no."
"No! Exactly. But who is gonna come play for the Oilers when it is known they've hired a depth killer. I've already heard murmurs about some of your guys looking elsewhere, that they're not looking to re-sign, you think that doesn't have anything to do with that fucker?"
"...what?" Connor was dazed, all of the information that had just been imparted on him swirling through his head, the yelling and bombarding of facts leaving him attempting to catch up. There were teammates of his planning to leave? He hadn't heard anything about this. They were planning to leave because of a decision he had backed? No one had told him anything. But, he realised, why would they? All they see is that he wants to hire a man who will hate and abuse them. He was chasing people, his own people, from the Oilers? What kind of captain was he? His own teammates were planning to leave and no one had spoken to him, had told him, what must they think of him? Did they think he wouldn't care? That he valued the cup over them? Looking at his behaviour over the past couple of weeks, he realised, with horror, that that was exactly the idea he had been giving.
He had always wanted to win the cup for his team, he even spoke about it in interviews, how more than wanting to win for himself, he wanted to in for them, but the actions he had been taking, or more importantly, his inaction and acquiescing to the whims of the Oilers upper management, hadn't shown that.
Tears began to well in the corner of his eyes, eyes that were open for maybe the first time in weeks. Connor truly felt like he was seeing out of his own eyes and not simply being puppeted along, a passenger in his own body, for the first time since the end of their playoff run.
"I...I..." Connor tried to speak, to say anything but Sid was on a roll and wasn't looking like he was set to stop soon.
"And that's not even getting into his opinions on mental health. Say goodbye to anyone who speaks openly about theirs, he'll destroy them. Hey isn't your goalie a massive mental health advocate?"
Ingy? Babcock would go after Ingy? Maybe chase him away too, he was a free agent this off-season...
"Can't forget the rookies though, can we? Say, Connor, have you spoken to Marns about all of this? I know he's still in the playoffs but I'm sure he'd take a call from you, tell you all about how much he liked having Babcock as a coach, how much he enjoyed his coaching in his rookie year."
Connor didn't need to call Mitch, he remembered the calls, the weeping and screaming down the line as Mitch told him everything Babock did to him on the Leafs as it was happening. He remembers how Mitch said that his only saving grace was how his vets stood up for him, that they didn't take the mind games Babcock used on his rookies to heart, how they stepped up and made their displeasure known. Could Connor ever face his friend again if he went through with this, talk to Mitch knowing he's the reason some rookies, his own rookies, are going through the torture his friend did. And would his rookies ever trust him again if he put them in that man's line of fire. Would they come to him with their problems, tell him if things went bad, or would they think they had to suck it up and deal with it. Mitch's vets stepped in and protected him, Connor is about to put his rookies right in the perfect place to be abused.
What sort of a captain was he? What had he become?
Connor grew up in those ugly suck it up locker rooms, as so many of his generation and the ones before it did, and he never wanted to foster that culture in his own room but it was becoming increasingly apparent that he was about to set a bomb off that would destroy any goodwill and camaraderie in the room he had spent over a decade building.
What was he doing? He was giving the Oilers the thumbs up to hire this man, and with it, to destroy his soul, his integrity, his captaincy. No one would trust him as their captain if it came out he supported this hiring, and seeing as Sid called, it was already known. He had to fix this, he had to do something.
Tuning back in, Connor realised Sid was still speaking.
"This is bad leadership Connor, you've disappointed me. You are meant to be a captain and yet you couldn't be acting further from it. You have let your drive for a cup kill any care or consideration for your fellow player and those under your captaincy. And I can tell you now, with certainty, even if you did hire that man, a cup wouldn't find you, because he didn't win those awards. He wasn't the one that won that cup in the 00s, nor those medals. A 6 year old could have coached that Wings team to that cup win, they were an incredibly gifted team. Same with the Olympics, there were so many superstars in that line up that even the 3rd and 4th line were home team staples. That man will not get you a cup Connor, he may in fact be the nail in the coffin of you never getting one."
He paused before continuing, a bit lighter in tone momentarily, "It will happen Connor. One day, it will happen and you will have a cup. Don't doubt that. I know you spent so long looking to me and comparing yourself to me but I'll remind you, Alex didn't get his cup until he was years into his 30s and he's the one who has broken all of the records and will go down in history. You have time."
The light and comforting tone did not last for long.
"But not if that man gets hired by the Oilers organisation. You will chase all the building blocks you need away and it will be yours and Leon's fault for going along with management."
Sid's voice takes on a dark tone, one that freezes Connor's blood and forces him to almost stop breathing, frozen like stone where he is sat, tears dripping down his face.
"You know how much I went through when I was a rookie, the abuse I faced across the ice and in my own room. The lack of protection and intentional assault I faced, was all done while under coaches like him. How fucking dare you, as a leader of the modern era of this sport, put your support behind someone like him. I am disappointed and disgusted by you."
Being called a disappointment by his childhood idol was something he never expected, and it was that that finally broke the dam, tears streamed down his face in an ugly manner as he sniffled. Here his hero was, Captain Canada himself, before him, speaking to him, and finding him utterly lacking. Finding his behaviour abhorrent. It was enough to break something in Connor.
"You once sent me a letter when you were a kid, when I was a kid, asking for advice. Let me give you some now. Go to the Oilers organisation and make it known that your opinion has changed, that you don't believe Babcock can do the job. Tell them to hire literally anyone else to do the job, you could hire a fresh out of university war historian and they'd be better at the job than he would be. There is more to coaches than the same 20 names that seem to constantly circle this league. Look beyond the NHL and pick someone new, maybe fresh ideas are just what the Oilers need."
Sid wasn't done, continuing to make sure his opinion was driven cleanly into Connor's head.
"If this happens, if this goes forward, and you do nothing to even attempt to correct it, then I will happily make it known to Hockey Canada that I find your captaincy lacking. That I believe your ideas of captaincy and the standards expected of a Canadian national captain are incompatible, are irreconcilable. That I believe international competitions like the Olympics are no longer a fit for you. I'd have to give them some other options for captains, but it wouldn't be a problem, they'd definitely be open to any suggestions I give, they're already lining up an advisory role for me whenever I decide to retire. Maybe I'll throw Mack's name in the ring, we've seen how well he is doing recently, he'd probably be a good fit."
"Do you understand me Connor? Are we clear?"
"*sniff* cle...clear."
"Good." Glimpses of the warmness Sid was known for off the ice had begun to slip in to his tone. On the other end of the phone was no longer a scary parental figure or childhood icon to impress, but instead Connor's friend.
"Connor, I care about you, you are my friend. I've been worried about you for a while now, but was letting you lick your wounds in private. I figured you needed some time alone to collect yourself and wouldn't appreciate me invading. But when I started hearing about this, it became clear to me that I had to do something. I care enough to know that if you were fully there, this never would have happened, so I had to get you back before something undoable was signed."
"Thank...*sniff* thank you. I'm gonna fix this."
"Good I'm glad.."
Connor is finally awake. After weeks in despair, he is finally back in control and he knows he has a lot of things to do, things to make right and people to apologise to.
Tears continued to fall but now they were tinged with happiness, that someone had seen he was struggling and about to make a mistake and had stepped in. Connor spent so long being the man in charge, the captain, that he forgot what it was like to have someone care about him, like a father would do, and help him.
Connor knew he had to fix this, and soon, before anything concrete was done. He rose from the bed in a hurry, keeping the phone sandwiched between his shoulder and ear, and he rushed to grab some shoes, not even paying attention to which he picked as he slipped his feet in them. All the while Sid carried on nattering away, as if they were simply catching up, sharing stories about his cat and the cool thing him and Malkin's kid had done recently. He checked himself in the mirror as he went, a pair of basketball shorts and an Oilers sweatshirt, he wasn't sure which number was on it, but he didn't really care in that moment. He wasn't a superstar in this moment, the clothes in combination with the puffy face and tears made him look like a guy in the middle of a mental health crisis more than anything, but he didn't have the time or the care to fix that, instead he dashed out of the room.
Rushing down the stairs, he heard Sid mention, "and I'll need to call Leon and speak to him too," as if he were making a shopping list of players he needed to speak with and deal with. It wouldn't surprise him if that is how Sid spends the start of his off-season, playing telephone tree with half the league and discussing their life choices. It worked well for Connor so he wouldn't be critiquing it.
As he came to the bottom of the stairs, he looked to the side into the living room and saw what, as he looked at it and the conversation he just had, could only have been an intervention. Leon was sat on one couch, a space on his left left open. Leon looked as run down as Connor had been, like he was running on autopilot, and looking back at it, Connor can't believe he had ever thought a fully competent and all there Leon would agree to hire a man like Mike Babcock. Celeste sat opposite from him, on one of the other couches, with Lauren in the process of rising from where she sat beside Celeste, opposite the Connor sized space beside Leon, turning to make her way towards the door that Connor now stood in the door frame of. It was clear that Lauren and Celeste had been worried and were planning to do something, to break Connor and Leon out of it.
Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, depending on who you ask, someone had already beaten them to Connor.
Staring at him, with his red face, tear trails, non-matching shoes, ruffled hair and messy clothes he would never normally dream of leaving the house in, Lauren and Celeste watched as the man they had come together to try and bring back to the real world returned himself, explosively.
Before anyone could speak, before they could ask what he was doing or who he had on the phone, he simply yelled "I'm fixing it!" before he dashed through the room heading to the front door.
Slowing down as he came behind the couch, he said his goodbyes to Sid and let him know he would be dropping him to Leon, so he could get the same pep-talk/wake up call. Placing his phone on the back of the sofa by Leon's head and putting him on speakerphone, he sent apologetic looks to the women in his life before continuing his run, the last thing he heard before exiting the room was "Leon Tim Draisaitl!" and he knew that he would soon be joined at Rogers Place by a furious German.
Grabbing his keys from the dish by the front door, Connor headed out to his car and began the drive to the arena. He had things to make up for, apologies to give and thoughts to make known.
Connor Andrew McDavid was going to win the Stanley Cup, and he was going to do it without selling his captain's integrity.
Sid believed in him, and so he believed in himself.