The Maven's Gossip Garden Is Open For Business

1. Connor McDavid is making the Edmonton Oilers wait – and that's not nice if your name happens to be Kris Knoblauch or Stan Bowman, coach and GM, respectively.

2. What the Oilers – not to mention all Albertans outside the Calgary City Limits – were hoping for is that The World's Greatest Hockey Player Without a Stanley Cup Ring would swear his allegiance to The Oil and sign a new contract. 

3. But McD's agent Jud Muldaver doesn't live in Edmonton nor care much about its beautiful Downtown; nor does Jud's California-based Wasserman agency.

4. They know about show business and its capital is not in Beautiful Downtown Edmonton; it's in The Big Apple. 

5. The fact is that King Connor is fed up with all the years gone by in his career without a Stanley Cup. Face it, the Oil's front office has failed Superman. That's a No-No!

6. Nor can Connor be happy with a top-heavy team, mediocre in goal with overpaid-overrated Darnell Nurse and Evan Bouchard on a D that gets worse after them.

7. And if you read between McD's post-loss comments-lines, he doesn't figure that Knoblauch is much of a genius behind the bench.

8. Of course, there's no rush for King Connor to sign any magna carta but the high command sure would like it to happen yesterday. With every passing unsigned week, they get a little more edgy in the front office. 

9. Meanwhile, we outliers enjoy it as the melodrama unfolds.

10. At the happy campus called Sunrise, Florida, the Champs' free agents are falling over each other wanting to come back without breaking owner Vinnie Viola's bank.

11. That means such worthies as "Playoff Sam" Bennett and Brad (Lovable Rat) Marchand want to stay put. They're just so happy in Dixie. Bradley has become a half hockey player and half Kid-Under-Christmas Tree since moving to The Sunshine State.

Trying To Rebuild The Rangers Like A True Contender In an adjoining column, I detailed the Panthers' climb to become a near dynasty. The following column looks at how the

12. Three little words uttered by Matthew Tkachuk sum up the Panthers' mantra: "Winning is addictive!"

13. Far-seeing Sean McCaffrey of Blue Collar Blue Shirts offers this: "I can see Breadman Panarin waiving at the deadline." (Had The Maven thought of that, I would have beat The Young Maven to the punch by a day.)

14. George Richards, publisher of FloridaHockey Now.com, touches my literary heart with this observation: "Paul Maurice never cared about having home ice advantage."

15. One more from Richards: "The Panthers' attitude of 'Just tell us where we're going and who we're playing' has proven to be the right way with this team. They don't care who they're playing nor where."  (P.S. They started all four series on the road!)