My Team, My Town

In the nine years since the Oilers lost the Stanley Cup, many things have changed. The US elected a black president, Alberta had a female premier, a woman won an Academy Award for Best Director. The last time the Oilers made the playoffs, I was 23, still in university and living at home. Since then, I’ve graduated from the U of A, completed a Masters degree in Ireland, bought a house, started my career, turned 30 (and then some), and lived in Europe for a time.

My life is appreciably different than it was in 2006, and I think that’s a good thing. The thing that has remained the same, other than an unwavering love of Friday Night Lights, is my love for the Edmonton Oilers.

I’ve been an Edmonton Oilers fan my whole life. My first complete memory is from an Oilers game: they were playing the Rangers and the game went into overtime and everyone thought that Paul Coffey scored, but the puck never crossed the line. I might have been 3, and I can see it like it happened yesterday. When I was 3, I got a puck from Dave Hunter after a pregame warmup; that puck sits on my bookshelf to this day. I have an autographed Jari Kurri poster from 1987 (back when I thought I was going to marry him), and an autograph book full of signatures from the days of the open practices at West Edmonton Mall. I remember the dark days of the mid-nineties well (Bob Beers on defence, anyone?), and the walls of my parents’ basement are still adorned with Oilers memorabilia from my youth. It hasn’t always been easy, but some of my best memories are linked to the Oilers. Watching Jari Kurri skate around on the ice at the Heritage Classic, seeing Gretzky’s jersey retirement ceremony, being in the crowd for Game 3 against Detroit in 2006 – these are all days I’ll never forget.

If you take a look at my Twitter feed on game days, you’d probably think that I hate the team and most of the players. I don’t, I swear. While it’s true that I spend more time complaining about them than I do cheering them on, you should be able to find at least one example of me nominating a random goal scorer for Prime Minister. I’m still a fan, though I think at this point it’s against my better judgement. I can’t wait until they win the 2027 Stanley Cup if for no other reason than I’ll be so happy I didn’t jump off the bandwagon after the 2009-2010 season. But there are times that being a fan makes me question my sanity and the world I live in.

The last nine seasons have been filled with agony, angst, misery, heartache, and despair (and those are just on the part of the fans). We’ve seen flashes of brilliance from some of our young guns and have been teased with the potential that our prospects and draft picks hold. We’ve also been beaten down, told that if we don’t buy season tickets we’re Tier 2 fans, and forced to take in a substandard product which would, in any other professional league, be cause for a complete dismantling of the franchise STARTING WITH MANAGEMENT. Instead, we just get more ex-Oilers doing their worst and expecting us to stomach the product they’re putting out.

The problem with all that is that we DO stomach it. We still go to games and buy merchandise and essentially let the lack of success of a bunch of man-children dictate how we feel about ourselves as fans, as Edmontonians, as people. The never ending debate about Edmonton being the “City of Champions” inevitably cycles back to the Oilers losing (even though the nickname was coined as a response to the resilience of Edmontonians in the face of the 1987 tornado). We’re embarrassed by the city’s slogan because our hockey team hasn’t won anything since 1990. That says more about us as fans than it does about the team, but we’ve gotten ourselves to the point that we feel we have to be apologetic about being Oilers fans, and that’s perhaps the worst feeling of all.

I want nothing more than to see my team win the Stanley Cup, and I’m going to ride this train all the way until 2027 when that finally happens, and Taylor Hall is in the twilight of his career. I want to cheer for a winning team. I want free agents to want to sign here, and I want other players to put us on their lists of cities they’d like to play in. I want to watch games and not be angry afterwards. I want to be able to change my Twitter profile picture (I said I wouldn’t until they make the playoffs again). I can’t have any of those things right now, but I have my Oilers and I guess that’s going to have to be enough.

The hard thing about being an Oilers fan is that there are high points in our history to look at and reminisce about. I mock the Habs organization for living in the past, but we do the same thing. The only difference for us is that the fans seem to be the only ones who think that way. Someday, we’ll be able to recognize the shift from these dark times into a brighter present but until then, as F. Scott Fitzgerald said, We beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.