ELKS HOPING FANS `STAND WITH UKRAINE'
CFL team aim to pack park for fundraiser as part of pre-season home opener
The Oilers, it has been clear, have been using up all the oxygen in Edmonton.
But is there enough air there to create another scene to capture international attention and recognition as a special city in sport?
Capturing the imagination of the nation with the brilliance and joy of Connor Mcdavid and Leon Draisaitl, the impact of Evander Kane and Zach Hyman and the compelling grate-to-great adventures of 40-year-old goaltender Mike Smith, the Oilers head to Denver to open the Western Conference Final as Canada's Team.
Things are wonderful in Edmonton and it's a great look for the city whether the Oilers are filling Rogers Place for their Stanley Cup playoff games at home, putting 15,000-plus fans in the stands to watch away games on the video scoreboard, or providing impressive pictures for television from the new Moss Pit from the Ice District where thousands more fans gathered for both Oilers home and away games.
But time out. Hold the phone. Just a minute.
Would you believe in the midst of all this, Edmonton — the city that sold a combined 100,000 tickets for the Costa Rica and Mexico FIFA World Cup qualifying games here in -10C temperatures with snow banks on the sidelines in November — has an opportunity to draw a similar-sized crowd and create an international feel-good story out of a nothing game?
In the middle of this fabulous fun run to the first trip to the Western Conference Final of the Stanley Cup playoffs since 2006, get ready to behold a new tale to be told.
Prospects of the Edmonton Elks drawing flies for a pre-season game, you'd figure, would be minuscule. The Elks ended last season without winning a single game at home and drew almost nobody for their final few games.
But I interrupt the hoopla here between games to alert you to the possibility that the EE football team could create a significant international feel-good story here.
Despite creating almost no buzz at training camp, the release of the Avs- Oilers schedule with games Tuesday and Thursday in Denver and Game 3 back in Rogers Place on Saturday, cleared the way for something special to happen when the Elks play the Calgary Stampeders in the home pre-season game Friday.
I'm not sure how many people in war-torn Ukraine will be following the hockey. But they might be more than a little interested if there is a great gathering at Commonwealth Stadium on Friday.
It has nothing to do with football. But it's starting to look like it could happen.
Led by former premier Ed Stelmach, a group is swinging into action to fill Commonwealth Stadium.
It's being billed the “Stand With Ukraine Game.”
“Along with Thomas Lukaszuk, a former MLA, we put together a number of shipments of food and aid to Ukraine. We raised $175,000 to bring the aircraft here and to buy supplies over and above those that were donated to us in excess of $500,000,” said Stelmach.
“It didn't stop there. We also made it a priority to have money reserved for Ukraine evacuees. We'd like to fill the stands as much as we can. The Elks are going to have blue and yellow flags for everybody, and the hope is not only to make it a significant local and regional event but a national and international event to show support for Ukraine and to welcome the evacuees to our community.”
New Elks CEO Victor Cui had the idea.
“As a community-owned team, we have a responsibility to lead this city when there are issues that are highly relevant in the world or relevant to the city,” he said. “I've been looking to lead in a way that only the EE can. We're the only organization in the city than can bring 56,302 people together in one day, in one stadium for one cause that's highly relevant to our community.”
This has potential benefit for the football club in terms of getting people back in the stadium and experiencing the first taste of a return to the former culture that Cui believes the team he grew up on can create. But that's not it.
Cui, a born-and-raised in Edmonton inspiration who built a billion-dollar Asian sports entertainment empire based out of Singapore, explained why he decided to offer his services for the EE challenge as his way of giving back.
His mom and dad would invite immigrant people from Asia to live with them until they got established, and a big part of making them feel part of the community was to take them to Edmonton Eskimos games.
The new members of the community from Ukraine will be invited to EE games during the season.
“We created a whole new ticket price for this game — only $15 — and the net proceeds will go to `Stand With Ukraine' and the money will specifically go to the Canadian Ukraine Foundation, which is a local Edmonton foundation set up to provide support to the Ukrainians that have moved to help them settle in to Edmonton,” Cui said. “We formed a working committee and it was created in two days over a weekend. We literally pulled this together on a Saturday morning and had the first committee meeting on the Monday.”
Will the sports fans of Edmonton that have had so much fun coming together for this Oilers run be inspired to do it again to make an international statement about Ukraine and embrace the new citizens of the City of Champions?
We're the only organization that can bring 56,302 people together in one day, in one stadium for one cause that's ... relevant to our community.