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History of an Oilers fan – Part 2

Today I begin part 2 of my ongoing history of an Oilers fan. If you missed it, here’s the link to Part 1 for your reading enjoyment.

My family and I moved to Vancouver in the summer of 1987 just after the Oilers had won cup number 3, avenging the previous years “own goal” which I still maintain Fuhr should have had it! Of course this was just the beginning of learning about heart break in Sports. A year later following Stanley Cup number 4, Gretzky was traded to L.A. It was weird. I had been living in Vancouver for a year at this point, 12 years old, still loving my Oilers. I had gone to a few Canucks games that season, since tickets were much easier to get a hold of than in Edmonton. Other kids, didn’t really care about hockey that much. How could they, their team was pathetic minus their one miracle run to the finals in 1982. In fact there were probably more kids that could name more Oilers players than Canucks players as I’m sure was the case in many cities. When I heard #99 was headed south I was crushed. I was mortified. It felt like someone had taken one of my hero’s and turned them into the hated villain. Of course the events leading up to the trade have been well documented and whether you believe Wayne’s side or Peter Pucks side of things one thing is evident, it wasn’t a hockey trade. At the time it didn’t matter what the reasons were. All that mattered was that an entire country was in shock, so much so that even the government at one point attempted to reverse the trade. There was never any doubt where my loyalty lied. I was and will for ever be an Oiler fan. I cheer for the jersey first, the player second. I don’t know if I ever hated Gretzky after the trade but I certainly didn’t like it when the Oilers had to play the Kings. And the year the Kings went to the finals and played Montreal, I was cheering for the Habs. I just couldn’t feel good about seeing Wayne hoist the cup wearing a jersey other than the Oilers.

In 1990 I had a friend who grew up in Winnipeg and grew up an Oilers fan. He, like me moved with his family to Vancouver. We were in our first year of Junior High school together and were HUGE Oiler fans. We used to play road hockey nearly everyday after school sporting our orange and blue jerseys. Once the playoffs started that year, I was a ball of nerves everyday. Junior High was a place where everyone was under the microscope for everything, and there were a number of hockey fans in my school some even Canucks fans. I was at a friends house one evening and the round one of the Jets vs Oilers was on. I think it was game 5 because I remember the Oilers were down 3 games to 1 in the series and Don Cherry was saying that Edmonton was going to come back to win the series and they were going to go on to win the cup. I don’t know how he called that, but I’m glad he did. We did come back to beat the Jets in 7 games, then swept Gretzky and his Kings. There was this guy at school who would wear his Blackhawks jersey every game day in the playoffs, and I was ragging on him a bit one day during the 3rd round series between the Oilers and the Hawks. Nothing major, but he obviously took it too personally. He tackled me in the hallway, put me in a head lock and told me not to make fun of him or his hockey team. He was way bigger than me so I decided that it would be in my best interest to agree! We actually later became casual friends, so obviously the damage wasn’t too severe. However once we disposed of Chicago I had to deal with the many Boston Bruins fans that ran rampant in my school. Where the hell did they all come from? I mean, there were more Bruins Jersey’s, hats, and shirts than Oilers and Edmonton is only a short 1 and a half hour flight away? Me and my Oiler buddy watched and cheered every game of that playoff run. It was the first of the 5 Stanley Cups wins that I was really engulfed in, and watched every moment of. The Oilers didn’t just beat the Bruins. We destroyed them for the second time in 3 years in the Cup finals! It was awesome. I went to school a few days later sporting my new Oilers 5 Stanley Cup shirt. All the Bruins fans hated me, yet they kept pretty quite about it. It was a great feeling.