City of believers: Edmonton ready for Oilers to bring home the Cup
As the minutes ticked down in Game 6 of the Stanley Cup final, thousands of Oilers fans rose to their feet.
As one, they sang Bon Jovi’s Livin’ on a Prayer, they screamed Shania Twain’s “Let’s Go Girls” lyric and then, finally, they chanted “We want the cup” over and over until the final buzzer rang.
The fervour continued outside: 104th Avenue was shut down in front of Rogers Place as thousands of people streamed across the road — screaming, shouting and high-fiving strangers.
The Edmonton Oilers beat the Florida Panthers 5-1, evening up a best-of-seven series that started with three losses for Edmonton.
The Oilers have held off the Panthers’ efforts to win that franchise’s first-ever Stanley Cup, with three commanding wins in a row.
If the Oilers can win Game 7, it’ll be a historic comeback.
And in a city that has remained devoted to its hockey team through decades of losses, being suddenly, improbably, so close to actually winning the Stanley Cup has Edmonton ready to boil over.
Make no mistake, a sold-out crowd in Amerant Arena in Sunrise, Fla., is also loud.
On Monday, Panthers fans filled their home rink, roaring to life whenever the Florida team scored. It’s a respectable amount of hype for a hockey team with an arena built on the edge of the Everglades.
But it just can’t compare to the electrified, bone-shaking energy of a full Oilers’ barn.
When Warren Foegele put up the opening goal on Friday, the eruption inside Rogers Place was ear-splitting.
Outside the arena, the mood was just as bananas. When Zach Hyman scored the Oilers’ third goal, the Moss Pit exploded – sprays of beer shot into the sky, and one young man in a white Oilers jersey briefly crowd-surfed over his fellow fans’ heads.
Some people — specifically, Vancouver Canucks’ Nikita Zadorov — have argued Edmonton Oilers fans are so diehard because there’s nothing else to do here but watch hockey.
But longtime fans argue it’s more complicated than that.
Zach Laing, news director of Nation Talk— an independent sports coverage platform that started as a fan-run site in Edmonton in 2007— says he thinks the team’s golden era of Stanley Cup wins that began in the 1980s when the franchise was still new planted the seeds for a fan base that won’t ever give up on its team.
“They had such a good start as a franchise that the level of commitment from the fans to the team was just instantly very, very high,” Laing said in an interview Friday.
“Even when this team was consistently one of the worst in the league, they still filled the stadium, they still had fans cheering. Support for this team has never died.”
The golden era ended after the team’s last Stanley Cup win in 1990. After that, the tough times started.
The next time the Oilers made it to the Stanley Cup final was in 2006, when the Oilers lost to the Carolina Hurricanes.
After the Edmonton Oilers defeated the Florida Panthers in Game 6 of the playoffs, Oilers fans are excited for Game 7.
That series went all the way to Game 7, and was marked by post-game riots on Whyte Avenue that resulted in broken store windows, fires and police patrolling the streets in riot gear.
After that followed the decade of darkness – a tough time for the team that ended with the arrival of Connor McDavid, who many argue is the best hockey player in the world today.
During McDavid’s tenure the team has made several playoff runs, even making it as far as the Western Conference final in 2022.
Despite a rocky start to this past season, a new head coach and a historic run of consecutive wins helped turn things around. Suddenly, the team is as close to the Stanley Cup as it’s gotten in nearly 20 years.
As the Oilers successes have mounted, it’s brought an undeniable liveliness to the city.
On game days, bike lanes, buses and the LRT are filled with commuters wearing Oilers jerseys.
Streets and roads are filled with vehicles bedecked in Oilers flags, and some keen fans have gone so far as to mount oil derricks to the back of pick-up trucks – driving around blasting their horns, hosting impromptu moving pep rallies.
Businesses around the city have hung up signs to cheer on the team, and downtown office towers have painted windows in blue and orange murals.
The cup run has brought a much-needed windfall to Edmonton’s downtown, says Puneeta McBryan, CEO of the Downtown Edmonton Business Association.
She says each game is bringing tens of thousands of people into the downtown area.
“It’s a bit indescribable, to be completely honest, because it’s so unexpected. Every week that goes on, every game that we win, it’s this bonus round of injection of economic impact, vibrancy, community spirit, confidence in our downtown, and more positive outlook for our businesses. Like it’s just – this momentum has been unstoppable,” she said.
But as the attention turns to the city’s core, it’s abundantly clear that the significant social challenges that grew during the pandemic remain.
Key, large retail spaces that lost department stores over the last several years remain vacant, and when the downtown office worker crowd was sent to work from home in March 2020, a decent chunk have never returned.
The ongoing and deadly effects of the opioid epidemic remain painfully visible: Edmonton’s homeless population ballooned during the pandemic, and many of the people who remain unhoused, struggling with addiction and mental health issues spend their time on the streets surrounding Rogers Place.
While the playoffs have certainly been a boon for bars, restaurants and hotels in the arena district, economists have cautioned it’s best to temper expectations of a Cup run being a windfall. People who spend thousands on tickets in June have less cash to spend on vacations and outings later in the year.
Going to an Oilers game isn’t an option for many fans — fan zone gatherings and watch parties as close as many Edmontonians can get to a game.
The cost of regular season tickets puts getting inside Rogers Place for an Oilers game out of reach for many fans – doubly so during playoffs.
As of Friday morning on Ticketmaster’s website, the cheapest seat in the arena was more than $1,000, while a single verified resale ticket for a Row 1 seat behind the goal line was on offer for an eye-watering $9,176, including taxes and fees.
The inaccessibility of games in a city with a young, increasingly diverse population in the midst of an affordability crisis is something that the Oilers and the NHL may have to reckon with at some point.
But on Friday, it did nothing to dampen the enthusiasm as long-standing fans and bandwagon jumpers alike crowded into bars and living rooms across the city – ready to spend a beautiful June evening living and dying by the fortunes of a hockey team that’s been breaking hearts for decades.
As fans streamed away from the arena Friday night, a middle-aged man in a navy t-shirt with an Oilers crest stood, happily slapping the hands of the people passing him by.
“We done it, we done it!” he exclaimed, seemingly in awe.
It’s been an incredible turnaround given that the Oilers started the series with three losses.
“The general consensus was that the Oilers were done,” Laing said.
Winning Game 7 after the comeback would be a feat not accomplished since 1942 when the Toronto Maple Leafs bested the Detroit Red Wings after initially being down three games in the series.
“Anything can happen. And I think the Oilers have really shown their ability to be a resilient team,” Laing said.
“They’ve talked a lot throughout these playoffs about playing their best when they have their backs up against the wall, and that’s really what they’ve been able to do here.”
With the opportunity to achieve something that hasn’t been done in decades, the Oilers will head into Game 7 in Florida with the hopes of a city on their shoulders
Despite their already extraordinary turnaround, the Oilers are still up against tough odds. But doubt has no place in a city of believers.
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