Calgary Flames left wing Johnny Gaudreau, left, and Edmonton Oilers right wing Jesse Puljujarvi battle for the puck at Scotiabank Saddledome in Calgary on March 26.Sergei Belski/USA TODAY Sports via Reuters
The first stone has been cast in this year’s Battle of Alberta.
Ahead of Wednesday’s series opener between the Calgary Flames and Edmonton Oilers, the greatest Oiler to lace up skates has backed the other team to prevail.
Wayne Gretzky, who famously scored a short-handed overtime winner against the Flames in the 1988 Stanley Cup playoffs, has picked Calgary to advance to the conference final in his role as an analyst for TNT. His bracket was revealed Monday after the Great One went eight for eight in clairvoyantly picking the first-round winners.
As a former Oiler himself, current Flames forward Milan Lucic gave an educated guess as to how that went down in the Alberta capital.
“I’m sure they don’t like it, but he’s just giving his expert opinion,” the Calgary winger laughed Tuesday.
After three years in Edmonton and three years in Calgary, Lucic knows as well as anyone the inner workings of the provincial rivalry. He’s also become an expert in managing relationships that extend across the competitive divide, admitting that those friendships won’t exist “for the next however many days.”
Such is the intensity of the first playoff meeting between the two Alberta teams since 1991, the rivalry has spilled over the boards and into the streets and offices of both cities.
Channelling the famous Seinfeld scene in which the character David Puddy puts on full New Jersey Devils face paint, Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek has made a wager with her Edmonton counterpart, Amarjeet Sohi, with the loser having to put on face paint and wear the jersey of the other team to council meetings.
“Everyone wants their home team to win and especially when it’s against Edmonton,” she said. “Oh my goodness, how could you not be cheering for Calgary if you live down here?”
The loser will also donate a still-to-be-determined amount to a children’s cancer charity, made in recognition of Ben Stelter, a 5-year-old Oilers fan battling brain cancer who has been befriended by the players, and especially captain Connor McDavid.
Having moved to Edmonton from his native India in 1981 – just in time to witness the start of the Oilers dynasty and the real beginning of the NHL rivalry with Calgary – Sohi said the long-awaited Battle of Alberta had arrived at just the right time. With the city still climbing its way out of the hole dug by both the downturn in the price of oil as well as the pandemic, getting people together to support the Oilers helps bring energy to Edmonton’s downtown core.
“It really helps with not only the economic recovery, but also psychological recovery because we have gone through a lot over the last 2 1/2 years,” the mayor said.
Other representatives of both cities have followed in the footsteps of the respective mayors, with Canadian men’s national soccer team players also getting involved. Alphonso Davies, who grew up in Edmonton, and Sam Adekugbe, who grew up in Calgary, have put a $2,000 charitable donation on the line, as well as the loser wearing the jersey of the winning team.
While everyone not directly involved in the series works themselves into a tizzy before Wednesday’s opening faceoff, Flames head coach Darryl Sutter, a native of Viking, Alta., seemed only too happy to pour cold water on the whole ‘battle’ talk.
“It’s not a Battle of Alberta. How many people are in Alberta? Four-and-a-half million maybe. … We became a province in 1905 I believe, so that’s 116 years ago. What brings our province together always? No. 1, sports. No. 2, church. No. 3, music. Think about it.
“So what’s this doing to Alberta right now? It’s bringing people together. They might cheer for the Oilers, they might cheer for the Flames, big deal. It’s a sport.”
Six generations of Sutters have called Alberta home, the head coach said, and while his family members are all Flames fans, he has friends on both sides of the rivalry. But one of the things that he really appreciates about the province is the fact that there are very few fence-sitters. The situation is very black and white, or in this case, red-and-white and orange-and-blue.
“One thing about Alberta, [the people] either cheer for one or the other,” Sutter said. “Very few, unless they’re transplanted, are cheering for Toronto or Vancouver or Winnipeg or Ottawa. That’s true.”
Coming off the series victory over Dallas – the second- or third-best series he’s ever coached, Sutter said – the Flames head coach was asked if he’s used the historical relevance of the rivalry to educate and inspire his current crop of players. But with a truly international roster, containing only nine Canadians, Sutter said there wasn’t much point.
As goaltender Jacob Markstrom, who was one year old the last time these two teams met in the playoffs, explained, “They didn’t air it in Sweden, so I couldn’t watch it. I heard a lot of good things.”