Déjà vu is a not unusual incidence on the planet of sports activities, and the Edmonton Oilers are not any strangers to copy matchups. The Canadian group confronted off towards the New York Islanders in each 1983 and ’84 for hockey’s greatest prize, the Stanley Cup. On this yr’s Nationwide Hockey League finals, the Oilers will attempt to avenge their Recreation 7 loss to the Florida Panthers in 2024.
Edmontonians who’ve been “loyal to the oil,” as fanatics say, had been looking ahead to redemption ever since. The Trump management’s threats towards its northern neighbor has fueled a wave of nationalism, making much more fanatics longing for a Canadian group to win the Stanley Cup – which has no longer came about since 1993. With hopes pinned to Edmonton, the finals additionally brings renewed consideration to a couple of Canada’s greatest exports: hockey and oil.
Novelist Leslie McFarlane as soon as seen that for Canadians, “hockey is more than a game; it is almost a religion.” Prayers and superstitions abound, from dressed in particular clothes to fanatics fending off their eyes all the way through penalty photographs.
The Oilers additionally evoke every other facet of Canadian society that, for some, has nearly non secular significance: useful resource extraction. In American and Canadian tradition, oil has lengthy been entangled with faith. It’s a countrywide blessing from God, in some other folks’s eyes, and a way to the “good life” for many who persevere to search out it. For many of us in communities whose economies focus on useful resource extraction, the potential for luck is valued above its environmental dangers.
We’re students of faith who find out about sports activities and the way oil shapes society, or petro-cultures. The Edmonton Oilers show off a worldview by which triumph, good fortune and rugged paintings repay – ideals at domestic at the ice or within the oil area. The Stanley Cup Ultimate gives a glimpse into how the oil {industry} has helped formed the non secular fervor round Canada’s favourite recreation.
Edmonton Oilers fan Dale Steil’s boots sooner than the group’s playoff sport towards the Los Angeles Kings on April 26, 2024.
AP Photograph/Tony Gutierrez
Boomtown
Edmonton is the capital of Alberta, a province recognized for its large oil, fuel and oil sands reserves. With 5 refineries generating a median of three.8 million barrels an afternoon, oil and fuel is Alberta’s greatest {industry} – and a lifestyle.
That is very true in Edmonton, referred to as the “Oil Capital of Canada.” Right here, oil no longer simplest constructions the native financial system, nevertheless it additionally shapes identities, structure and on a regular basis stories.
Seek advice from the West Edmonton Mall, as an example, and also you’ll see a statue of 3 oil staff drilling, reminding customers that petroleum is the bedrock in their trade. Seek advice from the Canadian Power Museum to be told how oil and fuel have remade the area for the reason that past due Forties, and glimpse pieces equivalent to engraved onerous hats and the “Oil Patch Kid,” a spin at the iconic “Cabbage Patch Kids” toys. Excursion the Better Edmonton house and spot how pump jacks dot the horizon. Oil is all over the place, shaping futures, fortunes and chance.
Pump jacks close to Acme, Alberta – a typical sight.
Michael Interisano/Design Pics Editorial/Common Pictures Crew by means of Getty Pictures
Set in contrast backdrop, the Oilers’ identify is unsurprising. It’s not unusual, in the end, to call groups after native industries. Soccer’s Pittsburgh Steelers pay homage to the metal generators that after hired a lot of the group’s fan base. The Tennessee Oilers have been initially the Houston Oilers, prompting different Texas groups such because the XFL’s Roughnecks to practice go well with. Additional north, the identify of basketball’s Detroit Pistons references automobile production.
Groups with industry-inspired names play double responsibility, venerating each a spot and a business. Some fanatics aren’t simplest cheering for the house group, but in addition cheering for themselves – declaring that their {industry} and their hard work subject.
Ales Hemsky of the Edmonton Oilers skates out from beneath the oil derrick for a sport at Rexall Position in 2008 in Edmonton, Alberta.
Andy Devlin/NHLI by means of Getty Pictures
In a TikTok video from final yr’s Stanley Cups playoffs, a person triumph over with pleasure on the Oilers’ victory over the Dallas Stars claps his arms and hops round his front room. The caption reads, “My first-generation immigrant oil rig working Filipino father who has never played a second of hockey in his life … happily cheering for the Oilers advancing in the playoffs. Better Bring that cup home for him oily boys.” He seems to be cheering for the Oilers no longer as a result of they’re a hockey group, however as a result of they’re an oil group.
And certainly, the Oilers are an oily group. The Oilers’ Oilfield Community, as an example, describes itself as “exclusively promot[ing] companies in the Oil and Gas industry,” permitting leaders to glue “through the power of Oilers hockey.”
The Oilers’ reference to {industry} is additional underscored by way of their trademarks. The present one includes a easy drop of oil, however previous designs featured equipment gears and an oil employee pulling a lever formed like a hockey stick.
Merely put, “Edmonton is all oil,” Oilers goaltender Stuart Skinner shared after defeating the Dallas Stars to win the 2025 Western Convention Ultimate.
Liquid gold
There’s a lengthy custom of pairing hockey with oil – and with Canada itself.
After the British North The united states Act based Canada in 1867, the brand new country looked for a particular identification via recreation and different cultural paperwork.
Input hockey. The iciness sport advanced in Canada from the Gaelic sport of “shinty” and the First International locations’ sport of lacrosse and shortly become a part of the glue retaining the country in combination.
Ever since, media, politicians, sports activities teams and primary industries have helped gasoline fan fervor and promoted hockey as integral to Canada’s rugged frontiersman personality.
The Montreal Novice Athletic Affiliation posing with the primary Stanley Cup in 1893.
Bruce Bennett Studios by means of Getty Pictures Studios/Getty Pictures
In 1936, Imperial Oil, considered one of Canada’s greatest petroleum corporations, started sponsoring Hockey Night time in Canada, a countrywide radio display that reached hundreds of thousands each and every week. A number of years later, Imperial Oil performed a significant function in bringing the display to tv, the place the Imperial Oil Choir sang the theme track. Imperial Oil and its fuel stations, Esso, additionally subsidized formative years hockey techniques around the country. In 2019, Imperial inked a deal to be the NHL’s “official retail fuel” in Canada.
Hanging it wealthy
Connections between hockey and {industry} in Alberta’s oil nation aren’t as regards to sponsorships. Central to each cultures is the theory of good fortune – traditionally, one of the most many stuff it takes to extract fossil fuels. “Striking it rich” within the oil fields has develop into entangled with the theory of divine windfall, particularly a few of the many Christian laborers.
Thinker Terra Schwerin Rowe has written about North The united states’s “petro-theology,” explaining what number of understand oil as a free-flowing reward from God intended to be taken from the Earth – if you’ll in finding it.
A Canadian oil employee kisses his spouse and daughter good-bye as he units off to paintings in northern Alberta within the Nineteen Fifties.
John Chillingworth/Getty Pictures
Oil represents fortune, and who wouldn’t need to borrow a little of that for his or her group? Sports activities are exciting as a result of every now and then skill, group chemistry and the home-field benefit nonetheless lose to a stroke of fine good fortune. Oil tradition pairs the theory of divine choose with an insistence on rough-and-tumble staying power, very similar to hockey.
From time to time for those who don’t strike it wealthy the primary time, it’s a must to stay on drilling. The following smartly is also the only to carry wealth. Oil prospectors know this, however so do sports activities fanatics who care for hope season to season.
Quickly fanatics from all over the world will sign up for Edmonton locals in rooting for the Oilers. They’ll throw their arms up in depression if captain Connor McDavid enters the “sin bin” – the penalty field – or dance in party to the Oilers’ theme, “La Bamba.” A few of them shall be cheering, too, for oil.
That is an up to date model of an editorial initially revealed on June 19, 2024.
