Devastated by Stanley Cup loss, Edmonton Oilers fans are still holding hope for team’s next act

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It had seemed so perfect, almost like it was destiny for the Edmonton Oilers to win, Finn Allen observed.

He was sitting on the ground with his arm around his friend, both of them trying to process what had just happened.

The trash and detritus of Edmonton’s largest outdoor Stanley Cup watch party whipped around them in a wind that had turned icy cold sometime in the second period.

“It was almost like it was written in the stars for us to win. It really felt like a movie: The three-game comeback. We have a Canadian hero, Connor McDavid. These are the moments that you pray for as children. These are the moments that summon legends and history,” Mr. Allen said. “I don’t think I’ve ever been more disappointed in the outcome.”

It had been a long and emotional day for fans, many of whom started lining up for spots in the city’s public viewing zones as early as 8 a.m., and had been awake with anticipation far earlier than that. Feeling as excited, fan Stephen Mallett noted, as kids the night before Christmas.

Francis Thrasher had been up since 3 a.m., a short and fitful sleep in which he dreamed about Wayne Gretzky handing the Stanley Cup to McDavid.

“Every time I got up I grabbed my phone and I looked: Oilers, Oilers, Oilers,” he said. “I’m superstitious, every time I wake up on game day and I stay up all day, they win. So I had to stay up.”

Having claimed the first two spots in line to get into the outdoor viewing area known as the Moss Pit, Mr. Thrasher (second in line) became fast friends with Jerry MacLachlan (first). By the time the line snaked around the block later that morning, the two had already exchanged phone numbers and social media handles with each other, and fans all down the line.

“What today’s about is about fast friends,” Mr. MacLachlan said, tapping the Oilers logo on his chest. “If you have this, you’re in. This is community.”

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By late afternoon, uncountable thousands of fans waited in lines that ringed entire blocks downtown Edmonton, with throngs more streaming into the area.

Their jerseys said McDavid and Hyman and Kane and Messier and Gretzky, and they represented all ages, all walks of life, all corners of Alberta’s capital city.

“See how crazy it is? Everyone’s been waiting for this for 30 years,” Zach Gonek told his kids, as they checked out the scene in front of Rogers Place. His eight-month-old baby, Collins, wore a tiny Oilers jersey, and looked wide-eyed at the crowds around.

Mr. Gonek’s mother-in-law, Angela Babb, has been a die-hard fan since she was working in the Edmonton bar scene in the 1980s, and says her kids had no choice but to be fans.

“They had to be,” she said. “Our town, our team.”

There was room for more than 30,000 fans downtown, but by late afternoon, it was clear the crowds would far exceed even the expanded capacity of the public watching areas, and police were sending people away in search of other places to watch the game.

A steady stream of vehicles cruised down the street by Rogers Place, the honk-honk-honking and woo-wooing and Let’s-Go-Oilers-ing growing louder and more persistent as the game drew near.

There was a vintage Chevy spray-painted with an Oilers logo, a pickup truck with five flags, a Stanley Cup, and an oil derrick in its bed.

On the sidewalk a woman dangled a stuffed panther on a stick. A man wore a T-shirt with a picture of Connor McDavid’s face on the body of Jesus Christ.

And there was, on the lips of person after person, the same refrain. “Let’s go Oilers.” And “I believe.”

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Nicole Genereaux and her husband were among those who lined up for hours waiting to get in, and even after arriving at noon, barely made it through the gates before admissions were cut off.

Ms. Genereaux said her father was a huge Oilers fan, who vowed that he would stay alive until the Oilers won the Stanley Cup. He died a couple of months ago, but she travelled to the game from Meadow Lake, Sask., with some of his ashes in a specially-made gold hockey stick around her neck.

“We made it,” she said. “Even if we lose, it’s okay. He got us this far.”

At first, the party raged under a bright prairie summer sky. People danced and sang and threw their hands up in the air, the mood of the crowd rising and then falling with the ebb and flow of the game. The anxiety was as palpable as the jubilance.

As the clock ticked down on the third period, the throngs grew quiet and still. Some held their hands in prayer. Others held their heads, as if in pain.

The woman known as Mama Stanley, dressed in head-to-toe silver, mouthed “Oh my God.”

And then it was over.

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Some people dropped to the ground, others embraced friends and strangers, or stood unmoving for a few minutes, frozen in disbelief.

“You know what? We played a hard game. We played a passionate game. We came from 3-and-0 to go to Game 7,” said Brian McPherson, trying to be positive.

Behind him, his friend, Christa Mayer, wiped away a steady stream of tears.

“I know this is the beginning of a legacy, it’s like the early years with Gretzky and Messier,” said Ms. Mayer, a born and raised Edmontonian who had travelled back from Texas to watch the game. But yet her tears kept flowing.

“I’m having a hard time,” she said, “I feel like a family member died. It’s so weird.”

On the ground, with discarded cups and the remnants of orange streamers swirling around, Finn Allen said he, too, felt like it might be only the beginning.

“If there’s one thing that the team has proven is that we got some sort of storyline out there,” he said. “We haven’t found it yet, but we’re searching for it.”

Or, as another fan, Q Larivere put it with a shrug: “I’m good, because the Oilers are going to win next year.”

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