Connor McDavid pressures Gary Bettman and joins impatient NHL fans!

This might be what NHL commissioner Gary Bettman needs to hear. On Wednesday, Edmonton Oilers captain Connor McDavid made it clear that he wants the NHL to give us best-on-best when commenting on World Baseball Classic championship clash between Japan’s best and the United States’ best Tuesday night. It came to the dream ending of Shohei Ohtani versus Mike Trout with two out in the ninth. Ohtani got Trout to swing and sent Japan to a 3-2 win and its first World Baseball Classic title since 2009.

When asked about it in a pregame interview, McDavid joined impatient NHL fans by voicing his desire to see a best-on-best tournament.

“That’s what we’ve been asking for in hockey for a long time, right? Best-on-best.”

“Look, everyone is talking about baseball, ‘Did you see Ohtani vs. Trout?’ and that’s what hockey’s been missing for almost a decade now,” McDavid added. “That’s what we’ve been asking for.”

McDavid is the biggest NHL star to call out Bettman on the subject of Olympics and World Cups. Earlier on Wednesday morning, Olympics and World Cups also called out the commissioner, lamenting the fact that hockey hasn’t had a best-on-best tournament since the 2016 World Cup of Hockey in Toronto.

As you may recall, the NHL and NHL Players’ Association abandoned plans to stage a World Cup in February 2024 as they had hoped, saying in a joint statement “it is not feasible’’ in the current environment thanks to Russia’s war in Ukraine. The league and union said they hope to stage the event in February 2025.

The NHL decided to skip the 2018 Olympics and planned to participate in 2022 in China before the pandemic caused enough schedule disruption to derail those hopes. The NHL has committed to sending players to the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan and Cortina, but nothing is set in stone yet.

Fans are asking for it, McDavid is asking for it - what is Bettman going to do!?

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