He’s called the Best Player in the World. But the title comes with an asterisk. And if should go his whole illustrious career without winning the Stanley Cup, his legacy will never be completely shiny.

He will forever be the Dan Marino of the NHL. Someone with all the tools and talent who accomplished everything but the main goal of it all: Winning a league championship. Chances are, he will win it one day.

But those chances are decreasing year by year. If McDavid is to lead the Oilers back to the Promised Land for the first time since 1990, the time is now. This is may be the best chance he ever gets, sitting oh-so close that he could almost reach out and touch it as his Oilers are now in what amounts to a best-of-3 elimination series against the Dallas Stars to see who represents the Western Conference in the Stanley Cup Final.

The good news, of course, is anything can happen in three games. But the bad news is anything can happen in three games. The team that wins first only has to win once more in two tries, while the losing team has to somehow come up with back-to-back victories.

Nobody’s guaranteeing that a win in the conference finals would automatically equal a championship. But losing in the conference finals ensures not getting a shot at winning it all. So, if Connor & Co.

hope to get the job done and catapult themselves closer to the same stratosphere of Oilers legends who came ahead of them, this represents their next best chance. And it all comes down to thre.