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History of an Oilers Fan – Part 4

In this edition of my “History of an Oilers Fan” summer series, I focus on the 2006 cup run, to the present. If you need to catch up, check out part 1, part 2, and part 3.

2006 was hands down, the most exciting playoff run of my life! I had a couple of buddies at work who were die hard Oilers fans like me, and we watched most of the games that spring together. It was amazing to have gone so long without any post season success and all of a sudden find your team in the finals for the first time in 16 years! Half my life had gone by since they knocked of the Bruins to win their 5th Stanley Cup. Man, did my wallet and my liver take a shit kicking during those playoff months! Knocking off Detroit in the first round was unreal, yet I don’t think anyone could have predicted how far we would go. Down 2 games to 0 vs San Jose in round 2? No problem. In fact we won the next 4 straight and then the first 3 games vs the Ducks in round 3! 7 straight Playoff wins, unbelievable. Game 1, Stanley Cup Finals. We take the lead, we have everything under control and then…. It all ends. Rollie goes down injured. Conklin comes in to replace him and lays an egg, our forwards loose their confidence. We end up dropping both games in Carolina before grabbing game 3 back in edmonton, only to loose game 4 and be faced with the near impossible task of coming from a 3 games to 1 series deficit. We all know what happened, we clawed and fought our way back to tie the series and force a game 7. My highlight of the entire playoff run? Game 5 vs Carolina, overtime, shorthanded: Pisani strips Sillman of the puck the offensive zone, and wires one top shelf past Cam Ward to win and keep the Oil alive! I jumped about 5 feet in the air, and my buddies claim to this day I left a dent in the floor of the sports bar we were at! I was so jacked up for game 7, I could picture team captain “Gator” Jason Smith hoisting Lord Stanley’s cup. I replayed the thought in my head all day at work. I couldn’t focus, it was like Christmas morning as a little kid, except better. Of course we would go on to loose a heart breaker that evening, perhaps a game that we were never even really in. And of course I along with all Oilers fans were crushed and disappointed. Adding insult to injury was Pronger asking to be traded following an incredible playoff drive that gave Oilers fans hope for the future. Pronger’s inevitable trade would set the team back at least a year or 2 and I don’t they have still fully recovered from that. Ryan Smyth, would be traded the following year at the deadline changing the face of the franchise yet again.

The next 3 seasons following ‘06 were filled with hope, disappointment, frustration, anger and disbelief at how close we came, and how far we had fallen in such a short time. It was like we had gone back to the pre-lockout struggles of not being able to compete with the elite teams but without the excuse of being a small market team. In the summer of 2008 Daryl Katz purchased the Oilers and attempted to make a huge splash by landing a big free agent. They led the Oilers faithful the believe that they were on the cusp of signing Marian Hossa to a huge contract. Of course the unwillingness of free agents to sign in Oil Country has been well documented and is perhaps more a subject for it’s own post here. The Oilers, under the ownership of Daryl Katz, will be more competitive from a dollars and cents standpoint. The EIG era had run it’s course in Edmonton and it was the right time for a change.

The 2008/2009 season was perhaps as frustrating as any I have endured as an Oilers fan. I was living in Mexico for the entire season. Televised games were readily available at many bars around the town I lived, so I had many opportunities to watch my Oilers. One bar owner, from Calgary, would always give me a hard time when I asked him to put on the Edmonton games. Normally I would listen to either the 630 ched radio broadcast or try to get a live video stream online. Regardless of how I did it, I rarely missed a game. When the Oilers fell apart in late March 2009, I didn’t know what to think. We had a playoff spot secured only a couple weeks before, and we let it slip away. It was obvious to me that this team was in disarray.

Following another non playoff season, the third in as many years, MacT took the first bullet. GM Steve Tambellini promised change, and his desire to get bigger and harder to play against. It doesn’t look as though he accomplished his goal this summer, but with Pat Quinn and Tom Renney coming in as Coach and Associate Coach there is room for some optimism. Is it enough to avoid a 4th straight season with no playoffs? I don’t think many Oilers fans would stand for that, mind you I probably said the exact same thing last summer about a 3rd straight season with no playoffs!

History of an Oilers fan – Part 3

Alright, I have to warn all my Canuck fan friends before reading the 3rd Part of my “History of an Oilers Fan” series. In fact perhaps Canuck fans should just bypass this one and listen to some Pratt and Taylor for a bit instead. However if you must, maybe you would like to check out part 2 from last week first. Let’s role.

Of course the next 16 years were anything but great feelings. Year after year of missing the playoffs, followed by a first round exit and the odd 2nd round exit was hard to take. In 1994 when the Vancouver Canucks took a run to the finals only to meet Mark Messier and the Rangers, I was finally back in a city with some hockey excitement! One night I was at my grade 12 grad party at a downtown Vancouver hotel during the finals. A group of use were heading up the escalator to the ball room for our grad dinner and who was on his way down on the opposite side? “Iron” Mike “freekin’” Keenan! As people started to notice him they all started heckling him. Me on the other hand just could never get into the Canucks. I guess it was bitterness between division rivals and the fact that they had been doing better than the Oilers lately. I began praising Keenan on the escalator to the dismay of all my fellow grad class members! I didn’t care though. It was cool. I just couldn’t bring myself to accept the fact that the Canucks were in game 7 of the Stanley Cup final. I watched, biting my tongue many of the games. Sometimes even pretending to be happy when they scored or won. When the Rangers put the final nail in the coffin in that game 7 I could finally relax. The canucks did not win the cup, thank GAWD! I just couldn’t have dealt with that. Unlike when Gretzky was in the finals with L.A., I actually wanted Messier to win. Maybe it was because it was better than having to listen to all the Canucks fans for the next year, or maybe it was because I felt like all those ex-Oilers on the Rangers team winning was almost like a 6th Oilers cup. For whatever reason it was, I’m glad Messier, Lowe, MacTavish, Graves, and all the others got another cup ring.

I enjoyed our return to the playoffs in the later 90’s and early 2000’s with the likes of Ryan Smith, Doug Weight, Curtis Joseph, Jason Arnott, and even Tommy Salo and Mike Comrie got me excited to see what they could do! That first round series vs Dallas in 1997 was maybe the most exciting playoff series the Oilers had ever been a part of. I was on the edge of my seat every game. It was great hockey and it was a terrific rivalry! That series win was the equivalent of winning the cup it seemed like at the time. Of course we never made it past the second round until 2006.

I’m curious, how did other Oiler fans feel about Messier winning a cup post Oil? At the time were you happy for him, bitter, indifferent?

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.

Upcoming Season

Since the Oilers have now publicly stated that Heatley is no longer an interest of theirs, I figure I can start my evaluation of the 2009/2010 season roster. But first I have to comment on the Heatley saga. Remembering that what the media tells us is generally “only” what we are “supposed” to know, it is possible that Oilers GM Steve Tambillini made this public statement to put heat back on the Heatley camp and force them to make some sort of decision, while at the same time trying to save some face for the Oilers organization and not appear so desperate. The conspiracy theorist in me says this is just a PR move by the Oilers and that they are still trying to get Heatley, but back to my post.

Assuming we go into next season with the roster we have, I want to look at each area of the team and evaluate whether or not we are improved. Here’s what the roster looked like at the start of 08/09

MacT & friends

cole – horcoff – hemsky
cogliano – gagner – nilson
moreau – pisani – penner **(who could forget the Pisani at center experiment, geeeesh…)
pouliot – brodziak – stortini
** macintyre

souray – vishnovski
grebs – gilbert
staios – smid
** strudwick

rollie
garon
jdd

I’m going to make a few assumption with this seasons roster so bare with me.

quinn/renney

o’sullivan – horcoff – hemsky
penner – gagner – nilson
moreau – cogliano – pisani
pouliot – brule – stortini
** macintyre, jfj, reddox

souray – vishnovski
grebs – gilbert
staios – smid
** strudwick

khabi
jdd

The only major changes are:
out: cole, brodziak, rollie
in: o’sullivan, khabi

I’m going to break down the team into 5 groups to evaluate:

Coaching: This is the easy one, how could we have possibly downgraded here? Moving right along…

Goaltending: The 3 headed monster sucked huge for all 3 men involved last year. It hurt Garon and JDD the most, while Rollie (the veteran) ran with it and had a great season. Now let’s suppose we re-signed Rollie, he would be going into 09/10 as the undisputed #1 goalie this year, unlike last year where he earned it back. I don’t think he would have as good of a season this year as he did last year because of these circumstances. Not as much competition for the #1 job and not playing for a contract in a contract year (assuming we signed him for 2 seasons). Sounds like the circumstances in which he started the 07/08 season and lost the starting job. Bringing in Khabi could be a gamble, but at least he’s a few years younger, has a Stanley Cup ring, coming off a pretty nice post season run in a year where he had something to prove. I give the goaltending edge to this season simply based on the fact that I think Rollie would have had a mediocre year this season as an Oiler and Khabi should be at least as good as Rollie was last year.

Defense: As pointed out, we are relatively the same personnel wise, but again there are a few other elements to consider. Souray had a great year and I expect the same, Lubo hopefully is ok health wise and added another dimension to our team D and powerplay, Staios had a pretty solid year last year all things considered and I am expecting the same. Now as far as Gilbert and Grebs go, say what you want about their contracts but it looks like they are both here for this season so what I suggest is that they each have another season of NHL experience under their belts and will both be better defensively and offensively this season. Same can be said for Smid (assuming he is re-signed and stays with the Oil), another NHL year of experience, and this kid is looking better each year. I say we are improved based on the kids gaining experience and vets being at least as good as last season.

Forwards – top 6: This one is tough. The only real change here is Cole vs O’Sullivan. From an expectations standpoint I think a year ago we all expected a lot more from Cole. I don’t think we have the same expectations from O’Sullivan so the comparison is slightly skewed. Since we did get a glimpse of how O’Sullivan fits in with team I suppose our expectations can be based on what we know this year, rather than what we thought last year with Cole. I would have to say we are about the same. The optimist in me believes that Horcoff is going to have a great season this year, Hemmer is going to dominate and gel with who ever gets put on his line, Gagner is going to have a breakout year, and Penner is going to have a pulse. The pessimist in me says we are about the same this season bordering on worse. Let’s call, it even.

Forwards – bottom 6: With Brodziak gone and no NHL seasoned replacement it’s hard to argue that we will be even equal at the dot. On the wings I don’t see any changes unless someone has a great season. I would say we are worse simply because our already terrible faceoff percentage will likely be worse.

Based on these 5 categories I say we are improved in 3/5, the same in 1/5, and worse in 1/5. However with our forwards being the “same” and “worse”, I don’t see how we are going to score many goals or win any special teams battles. This team is a couple forwards short of being real playoff team. If we had another center to backup Horcoff, and our D stays healthy we could be a solid PK team again. If we had a sniper for the first line we could have a PP. Seems to me we need a Heatley and a Malholtra, and they both could be had before the season if the planets were to all align. What do you think?

History of an Oilers fan – Part 1

As promised, today I begin my first in a series of posts about my history as an Oilers fan. The series will span from my early childhood, right up to this off season. Please leave me your comments, and share your own stories about growing up an Oilers fan for everyone to read!

History of an Oilers fan – Part 1

I have been a huge fan of Edmonton Oilers hockey ever since I can remember. I was born in the great city of Edmonton in 1976 at the old Edmonton University Hospital. Many of my childhood memories include snow, and more snow, some more snow, followed by melting snow, slush, followed by more snow, and then a nice dry hot summer. I never played ice hockey as a kid, in fact I could barely skate. I loved playing road hockey with friends in the winter or in the summer. Nothing beats taking a frozen tennis ball, whipping at your buddy, and hitting him square in the nuts! Unless of course it was me, then it wasn’t funny. I had a few favorite hockey players as kid, of course Gretzky, but I also really like Jari Kurri and Grant Fuhr. My absolute favorite player, and maybe even my all time favorite player was Paul Coffey. That guy was so smooth. He made everything look easy and the other team all look like a bunch of pee wee’s.

The first Oilers game I went to watch live was a pre-season game between the Oilers and Islanders. I can’t remember the exact year, but I was pretty young, 5 or 6 maybe?. My dad worked in the news room at CFRN and from time to time would get us tickets to games, though not as often as I probably would have liked. I remember one of the gas stations, maybe Esso? Anyway, they had a promotion that when you filled your tank you would get an NHL team puck. I begged my dad to bring me home a puck almost daily. From time to time he would. I had an Oilers, Flames, Habs, Nordiques, and I think Islanders puck by the end of the gas station promo! For reasons that are very unclear to me now, my second favorite team when I was a kid were the Flames! WTF you ask? Yeah, I know. I think it was because of those pucks, and I have to say, they have a pretty cool logo. **John quickly punches himself in the face for thinking these impure thoughts.** More likely still, it was probably just because they were the 2 teams my little hockey brain was most familiar with.

I remember one late afternoon my dad came home from work and asked if I wanted to go see the Oilers that night. I answered “OF F***ING COURSE!” Ok, I didn’t use the expletives. That probably wouldn’t have got me any closer to seeing Northlands Coliseum that night had I sworn at my dad. He then asks what team I would want to see the Oilers play, I of course answer, “THE FLAMES!” Sure enough he pulls out the 2 tickets to the Oilers vs Flames game that evening. I couldn’t have been any older than 6 or 7 at the time and to be honest I don’t even remember who won the game. But I do remember watching Gretzky’s #99, Coffee’s #7, and Kurri’s #17 skating around the ice from our nosebleed seats! I think I even remember being slightly disappointed that Andy Moog was in goal rather than Fuhr.

I vaguely remember the first Stanley Cup win in 1984. It was warm outside, spring had sprung. I was outside at a friends house doing whatever 8 year olds do. Everyone else was inside glued to their t.v.’s and soon enough so were my friend and I. I can’t recall much of the game but I remember the count down to end the third period, and everyone was counting along. I remember all the cars on 106th street leaning on their horns for hours following the game. I remember at school the next day the announcement the principle made over the p.a. congratulating our beloved hockey team. In fact at my elementary school they used to read out the previous nights hockey scores over the p.a. every morning, I thought that was pretty cool and a great reflection of how big hockey was to the city.

Looking back I wonder how much of growing up in that winning environment I took for granted. I mean, all I new as a fan was winning and having the greatest players and team ever assembled playing in my home town. I didn’t know what it was like to have a team struggle year after year after year. My only taste of sports heart break to date was the infamous Steve Smith “own goal” vs Calgary in 1986.