Edmonton Oilers thrill fans with historic Stanley Cup Final return

Some of Shelina Guaduri’s earliest memories are of huddling around the family TV to watch the Edmonton Oilers play.

Once, he and his older brother, Kareem, went to a game and stopped to meet superstar player Wayne Gretzky, the franchise captain at the time.

“The Oilers have been in my blood since I was born basically,” the 43-year-old, who now lives in Vancouver, told the BBC.

Four years ago his brother died suddenly.

Now, she wears her Oilers jersey during every game, including watching her home team make a miraculous comeback against the Florida Panthers in this year’s Stanley Cup Finals.

The Edmonton Oilers are now one win away from earning the biggest prize in the National Hockey League (NHL), playing their final game in the best-of-seven series against Florida on Monday.

If the Oilers are successful, they will become the first Canadian NHL team to win the championship since 1993, when the Montreal Canadiens defeated the Los Angeles Kings. This would also be the Oilers’ first Stanley Cup win since 1990.

But the team is on the verge of something even rarer: No team since 1945 has come back from a 3-0 deficit in the Stanley Cup Finals to tie the series. They are only the third team in NHL history to accomplish such a feat.

And only one other team – the Toronto Maple Leafs in 1942 – came back from such a deficit and won the Cup.

Fans like Ms. Guaduri say an Edmonton win would also be an important milestone in the storied history of the team, which was once home to Gretzky, who many believe is the greatest ice hockey player of all time.

His team’s winning streak in the 1980s earned Edmonton the nickname “City of Champions”.

A win would also be a point of pride for Canada, where dedicated fans have been eagerly awaiting the return of the Stanley Cup to the birthplace of modern hockey for decades.

Ms. Guaduri said her husband, a die-hard fan of the Oilers’ rival team, the Vancouver Canucks, is also excited by a potential win.

“It makes us all go ‘Oh my God, is this really happening?’ “Bringing together in excitement” she said.

The Edmonton Oilers, once the greatest team in the NHL, have been in bad luck for a long time.

In 2006, the team reached the Stanley Cup Finals with hopes of capturing a sixth title, but suffered a blowout loss in Game 7 to the Carolina Hurricanes.

The period that followed came to be known as the “Decade of Darkness”.

But in 2015, the Oilers signed Connor McDavid – then a 19-year-old hockey player from the Toronto area.

Daniel Nugent-Bowman, who covers the franchise for sports publication The Athletic, said the young, talented player proved to be a generational talent.

“The term gets thrown around very easily, but he is the definition of a generational player,” Mr Nugent-Bowman told the BBC.

McDavid is known for his dazzling skills on the ice, with speed and accuracy that few other players rival.

Mr. Nugent-Bowman said, “If his career ended today, he would be in the Hall of Fame and known as one of the greatest hockey players of all time, and that at the age of 27, without Stanley. Of cups.”

But it would take nine years before McDavid signed with the Oilers to compete for a Cup once again.

“This journey has not happened overnight,” Mr Nugent-Bowman said.

The dramatic comeback and team perseverance against the Florida Panthers has added excitement for Monday.

“I’m a big fan of really good stories,” said Travis Sengouse, who cheers for rival team the Calgary Flames but is still excited by Edmonton’s success.

Mr. Cengous recalled other miraculous turnarounds in sports history, such as when the Boston Red Sox defeated the New York Yankees in the 2004 American League Championship Series, the first to come back from a 3–0 series deficit in the Major Leagues. And still the only one – the team was formed. Baseball.

Or when LeBron James’s Cleveland Cavaliers defeated the Golden State Warriors in 2016 to win the National Basketball Association championship after coming from a 3–0 series deficit.

It is considered one of the greatest basketball finals of all time.

The Oilers are on the cusp of their own great story – one that is “very hard to resist,” he said.

Of course, the Florida Panthers have their own story. A relatively new franchise – created 31 years ago, the same year a Canadian team last won the Stanley Cup – the Miami-based team is hungry for its first championship.

They came close last year, but lost four out of five games to the Vegas Golden Knights in the finals.

While Florida is not known for its winter sports, the number of ice hockey fans in the state has increased following the recent success of the Tampa Bay Lightning, who won the Stanley Cup in 2020 and 2021.

Before Monday’s match, Panthers coach Paul Morrissey said he was “not worried about the past at all”.

“The anxiety of the last three games certainly didn’t affect Edmonton and it won’t affect us,” he said.

Meanwhile, Oilers coach Chris Knoblauch said he’s just enjoying the ride.

“Not just because we’re going to a Game 7, but I think we were having a great time when we lost three games,” he said.

The series is avidly followed by thousands of passionate fans in Edmonton, North America’s northernmost city with a population of over one million people, known for its freezing winters and enduring determination.

Spencer Bennett, a teacher in the Edmonton area, said his school streamed Game 6 during his middle school graduation ceremony.

“It was amazing. We were all just celebrating and screaming,” he said.

When he and students sang Oh Canada during the livestream of the game, it was like “16,000 of my closest friends singing our national anthem together”.

Mr Nugent-Bowman, who was inside the grounds, said it was “the loudest noise I have ever heard in the building”.

“Hockey is everything to Edmonton,” he said, even though the younger generation probably can’t remember the glory days of Gretzky’s reign.

“There have been a lot of bad years, and people have been waiting a long time for another team like the ’80s in Edmonton.”

For Ms. Guaduri, a win is Edmonton’s chance to once again live up to its nickname.

“The new generation can now see that this was and still is a city of champions,” he said.

She plans to watch the final game of the season with her husband and children, as well as family members.

“It will almost be like we are back in the 80s and 1990s with our families, coming together and watching (the team) potentially hold that Cup.”