The strangest and most wonderful thing happened in Canada on the road to the Stanley Cup. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when it started, but by the end of the NHL’s best-of-seven championship series, (almost) all of the country was pulling for Connor McDavid and the Edmonton Oilers to defeat the Florida Panthers.
There was the Toronto establishment where everyone chanted for the Oilers. The watch party in Winnipeg’s True North Square. Even Hitman’s Bar in Calgary declared itself “Oilers Headquarters”. National newscasts broadcast live from Edmonton with the Oilers as the lead story.
Such unity is not normal in Canada, where every fan base has at least one or two regional rivals they can’t stand. Vancouver can’t stand Edmonton. Winnipeg isn’t fond of Calgary. Ottawa despises Montreal. And everyone hates Toronto.
It’s usually only during the Olympics or World Juniors where you’ll see the entire country cheering for the same team. But somehow, like those squads, the Oilers became “Team Canada”.
Maybe these sentiments are because the Oilers had a lot that rival fans could identify with. The 16 Canadians on Edmonton’s roster were the most of any team to reach the NHL conference finals in the salary cap era, and a number of Edmonton’s players had previous stints with other Canadian teams.
Canadians’ desire to see the Cup back “home” in their country certainly has a lot to do with it. The last time an NHL team from Canada won the championship was the Montreal Canadiens in 1993, 30 postseasons ago.
But it’s more than that. Because fans coast to coast didn’t rally around, for example, the Ottawa Senators in 2007, the Vancouver Canucks in 2011, or even the Habs in 2021 when those teams advanced to the Stanley Cup Final. There was something about this Oilers team that resonated with fans on a deeper level.
Oilers Were a Team of Resiliency
The 2023-24 NHL season wasn’t even at the quarter pole, and Edmonton was already left for dead. It was American Thanksgiving, the NHL’s proverbial moment of truth, and the Oilers trailed the last playoff spot in the Western Conference by 10 points. Historically, the vast majority of teams below the playoff cutline as of U.S. Thanksgiving will end up missing the postseason.
But Edmonton would defy the odds and author one of the great turnarounds in sports history. Exhibiting a resiliency that was hard not to admire. The Oilers climbed all the way up to second place in the Pacific Division by season’s end.
Edmonton posted the league’s best record over the final five months of the 2023-24 NHL schedule, at one point winning a franchise-record 16 consecutive games.
Oilers Never Gave up on the Cup
The Oilers’ incredible will and never-say-die attitude resurfaced in the playoffs, and it would captivate the hockey world. After defeating the Los Angeles Kings in Round 1, getting past Vancouver in the second round, and beating the Dallas Stars in the Western Conference Final, the Oilers dropped the first three games of the Stanley Cup Final to the Florida Panthers.
History again told the Oilers that they were done for. Only one team had ever come back to win the Stanley Cup Final after falling behind 3-0 in the series, and that happened over three generations ago, when Toronto beat the Detroit Red Wings in 1942.
But the Oilers got up off the mat with an emphatic 8-1 home win in Game 4, beat Florida on the road 5-3 in Game 5, and evened the series with a 5-1 Game 6 victory in front of their exuberant fans.
The scene inside Rogers Place, with 18,347 fans singing “Livin’ on a Prayer”, was infectious. By Game 7 on Monday (June 24) it seemed like everyone had caught the vibe.
McDavid Made Everyone a Fan
Even those who couldn’t come around to cheer for Edmonton were hoping for Oilers captain McDavid to get a ring. The best hockey player on the planet, he has been chasing a championship since he began his NHL career in 2015, nine years ago. That’s longer than any of his all-time contemporaries, from Wayne Gretzky to Mario Lemieux to Sidney Crosby, played in the NHL before hoisting the Stanley Cup. While individual accolades have been plentiful, hockey’s ultimate prize has eluded McDavid.
Related: McDavid Sets 5 Records as Oilers Score 5 Goals in Game 5 Win
To see McDavid play is to witness greatness. His otherworldly skill and creativity capture the imagination. He makes fans out of non-fans. That was never more the case than in Game 5 when he delivered on his famous “Drag them back to Alberta” quote by scoring twice and adding two assists to keep his team alive. It wasn’t quite Mark Messier’s Game 6 guarantee in 1994, but it wasn’t that far off, either.
Oilers Couldn’t Finish the Story
We want to see our heroes finish their story, and there’s a sense that McDavid’s career will be incomplete unless he wins the Stanley Cup at least once.
McDavid was brilliant in the 2024 Stanley Cup Playoffs. He broke Gretzky’s record for most assists in a single postseason. He received the Conn Smythe Trophy, as playoff MVP. But the Oilers didn’t win the championship. Florida did, taking Game 7 by the slimmest of margins, 2-1, at Amerant Bank Arena.
The postseason is over now, and when NHL teams return to the ice in a few months for the 2024-25 campaign, fans across Canada will be cheering for their hometown teams once more. And there likely won’t be many opponents those fans would like to see their favourite squad beat more than the Oilers.
But what happened this postseason showed how special these Oilers are. They might not have brought the Cup back to Canada, but they managed something even rarer: bringing the country together.
