End of an era in Edmonton
42-year journey of highs and lows over on Wednesday
It wasn’t wanted.
It arrived late, asked for money, and overstayed its welcome.
But if Rexall Place (née Skyreach Centre, née Northlands Coliseum) was a lousy guest, it was the perfect host for almost 42 years of moments most fan bases only dream about.
The circular concrete rink in the city’s north end hosts its final Edmonton Oilers hockey game Wednesday. Fans and former players will say goodbye to a building Edmontonians at the dawn of the 1970s didn’t feel was even necessary. Citizens twice rejected plebiscites to fund a new rink to replace the 7,000seat Edmonton Gardens.
But when the Oilers and the World Hockey Association took flight in 1971, and with the Commonwealth Games eventually coming to the Alberta capital, city leaders realized a bigger building was needed.
The Edmonton Exhibition Association picked up the tab, with multimillion-dollar cash infusions from the feds and the province. They broke ground in 1973 on five hectares of land.
Deadlines fell like dominoes until a patchwork Coliseum finally opened Nov. 10, 1974, before a soldout crowd of 15,326. The Oilers and ageless goalie Jacques Plante beat the Cleveland Crusaders.
The Oilers and their fans settled into their new building, growing with the WHA team until Oilers owner Peter Pocklington changed everything in 1978 by acquiring a teen named Wayne Gretzky.
On Jan. 26, 1979, Gretzky was already a rising star in the WHA when he celebrated his 18th birthday at centre ice — surrounded by his family beside a cake shaped like his 99 jersey number — and signed a 21-year personal services contract with Pocklington.
“Looks like I’m here for life,” Gretzky said. “Everything is great here. There’s no sense leaving.” Oops. Less than a decade later, Pocklington would be demonized by Oilers faithful for trading Gretzky to the Los Angeles Kings for 30 pieces of silver (US$15 million, plus two players and three first-round picks).
But in the intervening years, Gretzky and core stars such as Mark Messier, Jari Kurri, Paul Coffey, Kevin Lowe, Glenn Anderson and Grant Fuhr — under the direction of strategist Glen Sather — would turn the game on its head with their uptempo, euro-style free-flowing pond hockey game that delivered one escalating triumph after another.
On a bitterly cold Dec. 14, 1979, they beat Guy Lafleur and the visiting Montreal Canadiens 5-3 — the first team ever to beat Les Glorieux on its first try.
On April 11, 1981, they knocked the storied Habs out of the playoffs in three straight, clinching the sweep at home.
On Dec. 30, 1981, fans roared as Gretzky scored five on the Philadelphia Flyers to seal a record 50 goals in 39 games.
And then the capper on May 19, 1984, when Dave Lumley fired the puck 180 feet into an empty net to seal the Oilers’ win over the New York Islanders for Edmonton’s first Stanley Cup.
The Coliseum was the launch point that night for celebratory mayhem that eventually forced police to cordon off the downtown. Thousands of fans honked horns, swilled beer, jumped on cars, hung off telephone poles and buses, and yelled “We’re Number One!”
The Oilers won it all again the next year, but it was almost as if Edmontonians couldn’t take it all in. Too much in too short a time.
The dizzying highs were followed a year later by an equidistant low, a loss in Game 7 of an early playoff round to the hated Calgary Flames.
The Oilers won the Cup a year later, followed by two more in 1988 and 1990. But by then the genesis of the great teams was an exodus. The greats left one by one as Pocklington struggled to keep up in the NHL’s new big money era.
In the years that followed, the rink hosted a mishmash cavalcade of returns, reunions and number retirement ceremonies.
The fans enjoyed scrappy teams in the 1990s, with fan favourites like Doug Weight, Jason Arnott, Curtis Joseph, Ryan Smyth, Todd Marchant and Kelly Buchberger.
Joy returned briefly in the spring of 2006 when defenceman Chris Pronger put the Oilers on his shoulders and carried them to Game 7 of the Stanley Cup final before losing to the Carolina Hurricanes.
For a brief period the magic was back at Rexall.
That was the last of the good times. The Oilers and new owner Daryl Katz have missed the post-season for the last 10 seasons.
The rink began looking its age, with spotty Wi-Fi and concrete steps blackened by the trudge of countless footfalls.
This fall, the Oilers move into shiny new Rogers Place downtown. The life-size bronze statue of Gretzky outside Rexall will move there, too.
But it will be tough to match the glory of the only home the Oilers have known in the NHL.
It was a memorable roller-coaster ride and a reminder that in sports, as in life, the joy is in the journey.