What I learned about Oilers fans after five days of pretending to be one

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If I had to use one word to describe my experience with Edmonton Oilers fans, they’re loyal, above all else.

And at least for a few days, I hope I had the chance to offer a bit of that loyalty back to the people of Edmonton.

Last week, I had the opportunity to be in Edmonton for Games 3 and 4 of the Stanley Cup Final, but this wasn’t some sort of contest opportunity or a pre-planned work trip. Rather, it was just a guy who made a dumb promise to his friends that he’s pretty happy he kept after all these years.

Over the past decade or so arguing about sports on the internet and eventually making covering them my full-time job, a certain section of Alberta-living friends and colleagues kept asking me the same question, year after year:

“When are you coming to Edmonton next?”

It’s a fun city — no disrespect at all — but it’s far from the top of places I was eyeing as my next travel destination. There are so many things around the world to see and do, and only so much time and money to allocate.

I’d been twice before: once for a few hours in June 2019 with a delayed connected flight, and once in November 2021 to take in a Canadian 2022 FIFA World Cup qualifying match against Costa Rica. But with all due respect, winters in Edmonton don’t seem like the best time to see the city, so I always returned with the same response to the standard question:

“If the Oilers ever make the Stanley Cup Final, I’ll be there.”

Fast forward to June 2 with the Oilers winning the Western Conference over the Dallas Stars, and there I was, frantically figuring out if I’d be able to make it work with my work schedule and also make sure that the relatively last-minute flights out to Alberta wouldn’t break the bank.

Within 24 hours or so, flights were booked, with friends happy to offer up their guest room for the five-day excursion. Tickets seemed out of my willing price range, with hardly a single seat available under $1,000, if you’re lucky. But my goal was to try to experience as much of the Stanley Cup vibe as possible around the city, and given the circumstances, I think I accomplished that goal.

Growing up in Toronto, it’s not hard to guess where my hockey loyalties lie.

My Leafs fandom has gotten more tame over the years, given my line of work as a writer here at Daily Hive. It doesn’t mean I follow the team any less closely, but it just means my days of jersey-wearing and yelling about the penalty kill are out the window.

I’d always followed the Oilers pretty closely, having spent enough time on Twitter over the last decade and made enough connections around town that I was trying to fit seeing about 15 people into my schedule over the course of my five-day trip.

And for this trip, it was all Oilers, all the time. I made it a promise to avoid making myself the focus whenever possible, but rather merely just blending into the crowd of Ryan Smyth and Ales Hemsky jerseys, wandering around town with a $10 Oilers T-shirt purchased out of the back of a downtown van. I wasn’t necessarily cheering for or against them, but rather just hoping I had a good time.

Another friend also made the trek out from Toronto, which made wandering around the grid system of Edmonton in the middle of the night a little easier when my body clock couldn’t figure out what time it was, other than time to eat a donair.

(For all the friends who offered up help in any way to make my Edmonton experience a little more enjoyable, it meant the world to me. You know who you are.)

Only once in five days was I asked about my thoughts on a Mitch Marner trade, which is about 10 times less than I usually hear about the topic on any given day.

And everywhere you went around town, you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone not wearing at least a little orange and blue, no matter the time of day or whether there was a game that evening.

Celeb spotting — at least as far as hockey people go — was also a fun pastime while wandering around the Ice District.

While he might not be all that popular in Vancouver for some recent comments about Canucks fans, there was hardly anyone I saw more approached than Luke Gazdic, taking photos with anyone who asked before eventually making his way into the arena.

Elliotte Friedman, Ron MacLean, Christine Simpson, Kelly Hrudey, Paul Bissonnette, you name it: if they were somebody in hockey media, I probably ran into them getting stopped by fans at least once in the area around Rogers Place.

And while I was out hoping for a great trip, the Oilers didn’t do me any favours to pick up the local psyche by dropping the first two games on the road.

But getting into town on the Wednesday before Thursday’s Game 3, the vibes seemed pretty cautiously optimistic, until they weren’t.

Game 3 was, well, pretty awful for the local fan base, with Edmonton falling behind 4-1 before an ill-fated comeback attempt in the third period made the final score 4-3. I took this one in in a full house at The Pint Public House, a personal favourite haunt of mine in the area.

The postgame vibes were a mostly familiar sense of Oilers dread of a possible embarrassment on the game’s biggest stage, but at least an appreciation of how far the team had made it this year.

Friday night out on the town was, well, a Friday night on the town. A tornado warning on the way out the door didn’t cancel our plans much, with friends and strangers alike opting to share their thoughts on how the series had gone and whether they thought the Oilers would turn it around.

Game 4 was just about everything you’d hope for a Stanley Cup Final win to be, with the Oilers crushing Florida 8-1 and an electric pregame Shania Twain set.

Despite Edmonton still being two games down in the series and needing three more in a row to win it all, it wasn’t really the time for the “they’re not really going to do it?” conversation. It was more the “wow, we’re so happy to be back here after 18 years” conversation, and one of the most dominant showings in recent hockey memory.

The streets and bars of Edmonton were as packed as I’ve seen any city in my lifetime, splitting my time this evening between The Pint once again and Greta, an arcade bar slowly expanding to more locations around the country. Lines to get in anywhere were worse than I’d seen in my glory days in Toronto, but everyone was out celebrating like it was the city’s biggest win in 18 years, which, to be fair, it was.

With Game 5 going tonight, who knows what the future will hold for the Oilers; but while my wallet is definitely in a bit of a hole, my heart has certainly found a new admiration for a city that gets far worse stick from the rest of Canada than it ever deserves.

Edmonton, I miss you already. I hope to be back sometime soon, but I’m making no promises this time as to when that’ll be.

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