Edmonton Oilers seek return to winning ways after years of frustration

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EDMONTON — The pickup truck is an Alberta staple, so common to be almost a stereotype, but during playoff runs, they’re more than an oversized minivan or a rugged work truck. They’re round-the-clock mobile parade vehicles, emblazoned with paint, the beds supporting hockey stick scaffolding holding Edmonton Oilers flags.

Oilers jerseys are everywhere. Even the dogs are wearing them. One house, in the downtown-adjacent neighbourhood of Wîhkwêntôwin, has a homemade version of the famous oil derrick that used to belch flames before each Oilers game, when they played at the old arena. The white picket fence shows painted Oilers jerseys.

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At a downtown brewery, the night the Oilers eliminated the Dallas Stars from the playoffs to advance to the Stanley Cup finals opening Saturday night, the patio was jam-packed, a sea of blue and orange.

In Moss Pit — the outdoor viewing area named after Joey Moss, a long-time dressing room attendant for the Oilers and Edmonton Eskimos, who died in 2020 — there’s a link to the halcyon days of the Edmonton Oilers.

Wayne Gretzky, dating Moss’s sister while playing for the Oilers in the 1980s, got him a job. That was decades ago. A lifetime ago for many Oilers fans, still in diapers the last time the Oilers won a Stanley Cup. Or, if they’re older fans, their kids may well have been in diapers. Many fans were in high school the last time their team made it to the finals, in 2006. Others have simply grown up as fans without the excitement of the Oilers making the finals — let alone the thrill of them winning the Stanley Cup.

In fact, it’s been decades since any Canadian team has won the Stanley Cup. The last time it happened was in 1993, when the Montreal Canadiens beat the Los Angeles Kings (and, as it happened, Gretzky, who played for the Kings that year).

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Arguably, three decades without a Canadian team hoisting the cup is a national scandal — it is our game, after all. And so an Edmonton victory, while certainly a local one, has a feel of national importance, reclaiming some aspect of our patriotic glory from the American sports megalith. Doubtless, were the Canadiens or the Maple Leafs in the finals, sportswriters would be fire-hosing ink on the subject.

But for Edmonton, it’s all local and right now, it’s all about the game.

Edmonton is a hockey city. It always has been, as year after year, team after team, the Oilers have attempted to recapture the glory days of the 1980s, when the team won five Stanley Cups in under 10 years. The madness and the majesty have been on full display in this city: Oilers captain Connor McDavid, far from a minor celebrity in this town, was swarmed by fans as he and fiancée Lauren loaded his car. An overly enthusiastic fan, hiking her jersey up to flash the crowd as the Oilers played the Dallas Stars, has been offered jobs by porn companies, perhaps a more-unprecedented occurrence.

And behind it all, outside the drink-swamped, horn-blaring enthusiasm of downtown, a quieter fandom persists. After all, Rogers Place sits 18,500 people. A further 12,000 or so fit in the Moss Pit and the nearby fan park. Even if you add up the remaining tens of thousands who come downtown to find a bar stool — and parking — that’s nothing like the entire city or a real reflection of the depth of the fandom. After all, a single ticket to the June 13 game in Edmonton, at the absolute cheapest, is going for $1,392, according to Ticketmaster, a price that’s nearly equivalent to the average month’s rent in Edmonton.

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And so, while fans will make their way downtown, credit cards at the ready, there are those catching snippets of the game on the way home from a late shift at work, listening to 630 CHED. There are the retail staff, unable to watch, but sneaking a look at their phones when customers aren’t around, shouting to colleagues when a goal has been scored. There are those, too, out running errands or at work who are desperately trying to avoid knowing the score before they can get home to watch the taped game. There are the fans at home with young kids, the fans living in other cities, in other countries, on the other side of the world, fighting against time zones and international date lines to watch the game.

In the beginning of the season, an Oilers cup run would have seemed nearly impossible for those unable to muster the eternal optimism necessary to being a die-hard professional sports fan. The team had a dismal start, dropping to the bottom of the NHL rankings after losing 10 of their 13 opening games. Then came a spark of life. Coach Jay Woodcroft was fired, replaced by Kris Knoblauch. The Oilers went on to win 16 games in a row, one short of setting a new NHL record.

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The world of sports fandom is defined — or at least can be — by a near-religious belief in talismans and omens. You see it in the lucky jerseys and the players’ playoff beards. The Oilers, likely because they’re the second-oldest team in the NHL, have a notably good roster of beards this year.

As for the change in fortunes, who knows? Maybe it was the new coach. Maybe the players snapped out of it. Maybe, somewhere in the city, a fan put on a pair of unwashed lucky socks for the first time that season and turned the season around.

If it was the socks, you can bet they haven’t been washed. If not since the season turned around, then certainly not since the playoffs began.

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