An NHL rivalry unlike any other
It’s been 25 years since the Battle of Alberta burned with an intensity not seen since
“Those guys look back at their career and this was their greatest battle, their greatest lore”
— MARK SPECTOR
AUTHOR OF THE BATTLE OF ALBERTA
He was a late enlistee to the hostilities, but in the foreword to Mark Spector’s fine book, The Battle of Alberta, Theo Fleury paints a picture of what was and will never be again.
Fleury writes about the emotion in those holy wars between the Calgary Flames and Edmonton Oilers: “The hatred, the fear, the competitiveness made us better.” He writes about the violence: “If you were born in the 1980s or later, you might doubt that some of the things found in these pages happened.” And he talks about what the rivalry meant to those on the front lines: “You find out what you’re (expletive) made of in those games.”
No, The Battle belongs to a different time, a different place, and, like the 70-goal scorer and the .875 save percentage, it’s now a distant echo of an era long past.
The game has moved on, and fans have moved on with it.
And that’s not all bad, because today’s NHL couldn’t tolerate the level of ferocity the Flames and Oilers once generated.
But, at the end of the foreword, Fleury veers away from the feud and offers something which should resonate with anyone who cares about hockey, its heroes and its stories. He writes simply, “This book should have been written a long time ago. Enjoy.”
So why wasn’t it? And why aren’t there more like it?
The Battle of Alberta ran through the ’80s and early ’90s, and even though it’s now some 25 years removed from today’s game, Spector brings it all back to life with a reporter’s eye and a wordsmith’s wit. The larger-than-life leading men from both sides — Gretzky, Messier, Fuhr, Anderson from the Oil; Lanny and Fleury for the Flames — are given star treatment.
The generals — Glen Sather for the Oilers, the Flames’ Cliff Fletcher and Bob Johnson — are profiled in detail. But the most compelling passages are supplied by the grunts — Neil Sheehy, Colin Patterson, Dave Brown, Steve Smith — who dig into the marrow of the rivalry and give the stories depth and purpose.
The narrative does wander. Spector doesn’t follow a timeline, instead shifting focus between various aspects of The Battle. The goaltenders are given a chapter. The infamous fight between Brown and Stu Grimson is given a chapter. Johnson is magically brought back to life in another. But it never gets lost, mostly because the material is so damn rich and Spector does it a great service.
Here he is on Kent Nilsson, the Flames’ Magic Man who didn’t always catch the streetcar named desire: “Nilsson, however, was never known as an avid perspirer.” Gold, Jerry. “Those guys look back at their career and this was their greatest battle, their greatest lore,” says Spector, the longtime hockey scribe currently employed by Sportsnet.
“I mean, you’ve got guys who’ve been retired for 15, 20 years and when they start talking, you just stand back. Lanny could give you stride by stride of his last goal (in Game 6 of the Flames’ Stanley Cup-clinching win in ‘89). He just lived it.”
So, again, why did it take 25 years to put this to paper? Sit down. This might take a minute. Hockey has always had difficulties telling its own story. A lot of that has to do with the culture of a game in which candour and individuality aren’t exactly encouraged. Some of it has to do with the current economic realities in the newspaper and publishing businesses. And some of it has to do with the new media where a pithy, 140-character entry on Twitter passes for penetrating analysis and various rights holders cram Top 10 lists and panel discussions down their viewers’ throats because it’s easier than telling a meaningful story.
But all those challenges exist to varying degrees in other sports and their stories are still told. If you have the right cable package, you can wander up the dial from the latest analysis of the Jonathan Drouin situation to the NFL Network, where the Dark Star packages remarkable features in a series called A Football Life. There you can watch Dexter Manley talk about his cocaine addiction or Bill Belichick talk about the impact Paul Brown had on his career or Kurt Warner talk about stocking shelves waiting for a shot, any shot, to stay in the game, or Gale Sayers talking about his relationship with Brian Piccolo.
OK, we understand NFL Films established a tradition in the game which is carried on to this day. But what’s stopping hockey? TSN and Sportsnet have already sold their souls to the league, but that doesn’t mean Ted Lindsay’s story isn’t worth telling. Or Derek Sanderson’s. Or Igor Larionov’s. How about a piece on Dave Keon’s relationship with the Leafs? Or what it was like to play for Scotty Bowman?
Instead, we get an endless loop of Patrik Stefan fumbling the puck as he heads toward an empty net or Steve Sullivan mocking the fan who just took a puck in the yob.
The game has these stories — rich, powerful, heartbreaking, inspiring stories — which are drifting out of our consciousness and that’s a bloody tragedy. Spector has given us some of those stories and it’s a great gift. But there’s a shared responsibility to tell more.
The game is already losing its way. Without those stories, it’s irrevocably lost.