As the final seconds of Monday night’s Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals ticked down, fans inside the St. Albert Legion continued to beat a drum and chant: “Let’s go Oilers!”
It wasn’t until the timer hit zero that the sound of clinking plates and glasses, the voices of broadcasters, and the shuffling feet of patrons replaced the cheering and shouting.
“You know, I don't think anybody expected a loss,” said Rhonda Egar, office manager at the Legion.
The Florida Panthers beat the Edmonton Oilers 2-1 in the closing game of a final series that saw the Oilers become the first team since 1945 to force a Game 7 after losing the first three games of the series.
As the Panthers defended their 2-1 lead into the third period, patrons at the Legion watched the projector screen with growing intensity.
“We’re feeling stressed,” said patron Matt Jaffray during the second intermission.
Patron Matt Rowsell plays trombone with a local army band and was hopeful that he’d get to be part of the team’s victory parade.
“Just have another Sea Change (beer) and get over it,” is how he said he was dealing with the anxiety.
After the game, patrons gathered in groups to mull the team’s loss and discuss failed strategies and missed opportunities.
But some were still feeling optimistic about the whole ordeal.
“[The games] brought our country together, they brought our city together,” Egar said. “Just 30 years waiting for this, you know, the Oilers are always golden in this town.”
St. Albert fans fly to Florida
St. Albert resident Mike Howes joined roughly 100 Edmonton-area fans on a chartered flight to Sunrise Florida to watch the Final in person.
“It was a little down in there,” after the Oilers’ loss, Howes said. “We went back to our hotel, had a couple of drinks, and it was pretty tame afterwards.”
When he spoke with the Gazette prior to the game, Howes was near the arena at a bar, which he described as awash with Oilers jerseys.
Roughly 100 fans, mostly business owners from the Edmonton area, boarded the charter flight Sunday morning, Howes said.
A seat on the flight cost $2,500, and tickets to the game had an even heftier price tag, coming in around $7,000 for two people.
“Not for the faint of heart … It’s a pricey little adventure,” Howes said ahead of the game. “But it doesn’t happen every day … I was at Game 6 in ’06, and that was, what, 18 years ago? I'm 59. I can't wait another 18 years.”
Howes estimated about 20-25 of the passengers on the flight were from St. Albert, many of them “friends of friends” who took a chance to see what could have been a historic win for the team.
The loss was a big letdown, but Howes said he didn’t regret the trip. “I’d do it all over again even if I knew they were going to lose,” he said.
“We’re all very hopeful that this is just the start of another year or two of going ahead and getting there. Maybe they’ll be like the Oilers in the 80s, and they get that close the first time, and then they come back and win three or four in a row. So that’s what we’re going to hang on to.”
