In this week’s edition of Time Travels of the Orange and Blue, we take a look at one of the highest-scoring games in Oilers history (which would certainly sent the fanbase into hysterics if it were to happen today).
December 9th, 1979
In the Oilers first season in the NHL finding goalie stability was a challenge as six netminders would step between the pipes. Only one of them would record a shutout on the season as Eddie Mio would blank the Hartford Whalers 3-0 in his first career and the Oilers first NHL shutout.
Mio would make 30 saves for the victory and would go on to lead the team in wins with nine. The growing pains were real as the team made the jump from the WHA to the NHL but they had a few silver linings in their maiden voyage in the best hockey league in the world.
December 11th, 1985
Remember in the last edition I talked about a game in 1981 between the Oilers and Nordiques being the definition of how defense was clearly optional in that era of the NHL? Well this game on a cold night at Northlands blew that one out of the water.
The Oilers and Black Hawks would meet up and it if you were there you probably wondered what was the point of having goalies as Edmonton would win 12-9 in what remains to this day the highest scoring game in modern era of the NHL – 21 combined goals. (The feat was accomplished once before when the Montreal Canadiens knocked off the Toronto St. Patricks 14-7 in 1920).
The stats in this game sound near Looney Tuneish as Wayne Gretzky had 7 assists, Jari Kurri and Glenn Anderson each had a hat trick (with Anderson also adding three helpers for a six point game) and the first 10 (!) Edmonton goals came in the first 40 minutes. Chicago came back to make a game of things as the teams combined for 12 goals in the 2nd period alone. Murray Bannerman and Grant Fuhr must have been waving white flags in their crease but somehow neither team put up more than 50 shots in this game.
Some things you just can’t explain!
December 11th, 2015
For the Oilers, he’d done it all, first as a player in the WHA and then later as a head coach and General Manager so it was fitting that the final banner to go up into rafters of Rexall Place would be for the one and only Glen Sather.
The ceremony was planned for the night in which he was in town with the New York Rangers during his first year only as the Team President and not the General Manager, a role he stepped down from at the end of the 2014-15.
A banner with his name and six Stanley Cups under it rose during a pre game ceremony and in Sather’s time with the Oilers he was of course known for bringing Cups to the city but also helping develop so many of the icons of not just Oilers hockey but icons of the NHL in the 80s and he’d seen it all with the franchise.
Sather was behind the bench for their final days in the WHA and their early days in the NHL. He was a GM during the first rebuild in the mid 1990s and their redemption in the late 1990s as they reinvented themselves as a gritty lunch pail team that stunned Dallas and Colorado in back to back seasons in the 1997 and 1998 playoffs respectively.
In 1997 he was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame, becoming the 3rd person attached to the Oilers to be enshrined in the Hall. Sather moved on to the New York Rangers after the 1999-00 season where he’s remained in a front office role ever since.
Despite being employed by the Rangers, he’s always been attached to the Oilers and Glen Sather night he was surrounded by alumni and maybe one of the coolest parts of the pre game ceremony was the fact that he walked down from the pressbox through the stands, cigar and all to get down to the ice for it.
On the ice the Oilers and Rangers played a game straight out of 1984, and the home side would get the 7-5 win.
Next Week:
In Volume 10 we’ll look at the trade of one of the Great One’s body guards, everything Dave Lumley touching turning to gold for a span of 12 games and an Oilers home game in Oklahoma City?
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