Hi everyone, Mark Iype in Edmonton today.
Well, it finally happened.
The Edmonton Oilers have reached the Stanley Cup final and the city is buzzing.
Even if you have no rooting interest in the game, it’s awfully hard not to get caught up in the excitement if you’re living in northern Alberta. Oilers orange and blue is everywhere. Jerseys are ubiquitous, flags on cars whip by at every intersection and locals can’t stop talking about it.
While there has been some discussion of the Oilers now being “Canada’s team” as the country yearns for the return of the Cup north of the border for the first time in 31 years, that is probably an idea best left to sports talk radio.
Certainly fans in Vancouver probably aren’t cheering for an Edmonton championship after the Oilers’ razor-thin series victory over the Canucks in the second round of the NHL playoffs. And a few hundred kilometres south of Alberta’s capital, Calgary Flames’ supporters – loathe to ever cheer for their more successful provincial counterparts – are still trying to wash off the disappointment of the season. (Something made significantly harder in recent days with a major water main break forcing Calgary residents to shorten showers and forego baths.)
But as The Globe’s Cathal Kelly wrote this week, to be the premier hockey country in the world, Canada must have the premier hockey player: namely Oilers captain Connor McDavid.
“We can argue just about everything, but some things should be an easy consensus. When it comes to the national sport, our best should be the best. If you accept that, then you know where your rooting interest lies,” Kelly wrote.
McDavid has been “the Next One” since he was a kid growing up in Ontario playing the game he was clearly born to play. And when he was drafted by the Oilers in 2015, expectations went through the roof. Playing in the shadow of the 1980s Oilers teams, with names such as Gretzky, Messier, Kurri and Coffey always on the tip of the tongue for Edmonton hockey fans, he has more than lived up to the hype when it comes to individual accomplishments.
But hockey’s holy grail has remained elusive, even as he racked up scoring titles and Hart trophies (league MVPs). Winning the Stanley Cup is all there is left for the consensus best player in the world to accomplish in the NHL.
And it’s been on his mind for a long, long time.
If anyone knows that, it’s his mom: “When he was a kid, he would watch the Stanley Cup final and always felt a little jealous of the team that won,” Kelly McDavid told The Globe’s Marty Klinkenberg this week. “He wanted it so badly. This is certainly a dream come true for him.”
So, as hockey fans everywhere settle in to watch the Stanley Cup final this weekend, perhaps the next McDavid among them, Edmonton will certainly be buzzing, hoping its team can be the one to end our national championship drought.
This is the weekly Western Canada newsletter written by B.C. Editor Wendy Cox and Alberta Bureau Chief Mark Iype. If you’re reading this on the web, or it was forwarded to you from someone else, you can sign up for it and all Globe newsletters here.