BY FLOCKING OFF TO KELOWNA, DUCKS AVOID OILER FEVER
Relaxing in the Okanagan keeps Anaheim from ‘pretty emotional, pretty rabid’ fans
Ryan Getzlaf doesn’t scare easily. Ditto for Ryan Kesler, Kevin Bieksa and a host of grizzled Anaheim Ducks veterans.
Throw what you will at them, be it insult, elbow or forechecker — the Ducks are 3-0 on the road in the 2017 NHL playoffs, so they’re obviously comfortable playing games in enemy territory.
The prospect of spending two entire off days in Edmonton, in the omnipresence of Oilers fans, was apparently far less palatable. So the Ducks flew for Kelowna, B.C., immediately after beating the Oilers 6-3 on Sunday, and were due to return to Edmonton on Tuesday night.
“It’s nice to get out of Alberta and back to beautiful British Columbia,” Bieksa told reporters in Kelowna. “Everybody knows it’s the best part of Canada: clean air, beautiful sun, mountains.”
More blue hair, fewer orange sweaters.
He’s a former Vancouver Canuck, so we’ll forgive his horrible bias. And Getzlaf has a summer home in Kelowna, so that’s where his heart is at.
But the Ducks essentially passed up two free days in Edmonton in May because of car flags and McDavid sweaters — and maybe the yelling. Do they not know that April is the seventh and final month of our winter, that May is all about rebirth and moving dirt off the side of our roads and into the potholes? It’s an engineering marvel that shouldn’t be missed.
Oh yeah, there’s art and culture, dining and the river valley too. Ducks on the Hawrelak Park pond. Come on, that’s a natural.
At any rate, Oilers centre Mark Letestu thinks Edmonton fans should be happy to have influenced a rival team’s travel plans.
“It really feels like a bubble right now, like you’re inside. Everybody is talking about Oiler playoff hockey. There’s jerseys, there’s hats. … I walk my kid to school, everybody is wearing Oiler stuff. There’s really a fever out there,” he said.
“So I understand why (the Ducks) left and I think fans should be thrilled about that. That teams have to take a couple days’ hiatus from the city because there’s so many of them, I think that’s great. I think that’s a testament to the amount of support we’ve gotten.”
If that’s a home-ice advantage, so be it. Home teams could use the help this post-season. Before Tuesday’s games, home sides trailed visitors 30-23 and had been outscored 139-134. The Oilers top the road warrior charts at 4-1. You had to go 10 teams deep to find one with a losing record on the road. That’s the Rangers.
The NHL’s rinks were long ago standardized, or homogenized if you will. And travel is way more comfortable now that every team has ditched the crowded, inconvenient, time-consuming commercial flights in favour of charters. That plays a role in marginalizing, though not eliminating, home-ice advantage.
“You’re still in front of your fans. They’ll never say it, but there’s influence on maybe referees’ calls (from) the cheering, and they’re into the game,” Letestu said. “There’s small nuances — the last change, which has obviously become a big thing in this series with the (line) matching. There’s advantages to it.”
Anaheim saw an advantage in getting out of Dodge after first receiving an eyeful and earful of Canadian playoff mania in Calgary during their first-round series. They won both games in the Saddledome despite the presence of rabid Flames fans, but the schedule offered them a respite from round-the-clock hockey and they jumped at it.
“I don’t think they’re wrong in doing that,” Oilers head coach Todd McLellan said. “We may, if we’re fortunate enough to go on, do something like that down the road.”
He was an assistant coach with Detroit when the Red Wings headed to a resort amid the 2008 Stanley Cup final against Pittsburgh. He also recalls what Edmonton was like in 2006 for the Wings.
“It wasn’t always a comfortable city to be in and walk around downtown. Oilers fans are pretty emotional, pretty rabid. They’re everywhere; they’re like ants, which is great for us …
“Calgary was the same way. We played them the following year and I think they had a fire truck outside our hotel with a horn that went off every 20 minutes. I’m not sure what the fire department was doing, but they had a 24-hour exercise.”