My dad lived and worked in central and northern Alberta most of his life prior to meeting my mom. He graduated high school a couple of months before the Oilers played their debut game against the Ottawa Nationals in 1972. He never really mentioned the WHA teams and players very much, though, so unlike Bruce, I suspect he didn't really get into the team until the NHL merger, when they became more readily available on Hockey Night in Canada. Mom is an Anglo Montrealer, so of course, she was all about the Habs growing up: hard not to, given that she grew up during the latter half of the greatest prolonged winning stretch in NHL history, a run of 16 Stanley Cups in 27 years encompassing three distinct dynasties, from 1953-79. By the time I was born in September 1986, I had already long gotten used to the cheers and howls that accompanied Saturday evenings in front of the TV, and of course, was indoctrinated into the ways of the Oilers and Canadiens from the very beginning. My mommy and daddy raised me right.

Due to my relatively late birthday, I basically missed the Dynasty. I have an image in my mind of seeing Messier, Lowe, and Kurri raising the Cup at the Gahden in 1990 on our old TV, but it's more likely I'm remembering Sportsdesk replaying that clip after Messier was traded the following year. My earliest concrete Oilers memories are, truthfully, ones of disappointment. I don't remember them winning that legendary Battle of Alberta in '91, but I do remember Theoren Fleury skidding across the Northlands Coliseum ice, whooping it up like an eight-year-old, having just sent the series back to Calgary in overtime. I remember bafflement and confusion when the Oilers bowed out to the North Stars later that spring. To this day, I still remember thinking, "But...the Oilers don't lose. They don't!" Oh, poor four-and-a-half-year-old Doogie. If only you knew. From there, it was the Messier trade and the Anderson/Fuhr trade, which served as the last nails in the coffin first commissioned four years earlier by Peter Pocklington, Glen Sather, and Paul Coffey. I didn't have any sense of the historical context, of course, but even at that age, I knew something was horribly wrong when those deals went through. Truthfully, I didn't even know at first that Wayne Gretzky of the Kings, Paul Coffey of the Penguins, and Andy Moog of the Bruins were actually Stanley Cup-winning Oilers first. I'm sure Dad tried to set the record straight, but even though I hung on his every word on hockey back then, I think he also knew that I wasn't going to really internalize any sort of correction until I learned it on my own, usually from a book (in this case, most of it came from The 1992-93 NHL Fact and Record Book, as well as a similar tome put out out by the Canadiens and, of course, our Dave Elston collections).

Meanwhile, out east, the Habs were having some issues with the Boston Bruins. Led by Cam Neely and Ray Bourque, it seemed that the Bruins were the Habs' kryptonite. Little did I know that this was in fact a reversal of affairs after more than 40 years of singular Canadiens dominance. Of course, I knew that the Habs had won 23 Stanley Cups, including all the various dynasties of the Original Six and early expansion era, having read the Habs' own fact and record books from the early '90s; I just didn't realize that so many of their victories had come against the Big Bad Bruins. Anyway, they finally managed to avoid the Bruins one fine spring, beating a young Nordiques team only three years and a change of address from glory, and upstart teams from Buffalo and Long Island who had upset the perennial Wales favourites as I knew them, Boston and Pittsburgh, respectively, to reach the Finals against Gretzky's Kings. The '93 playoffs were the first that I remember watching a lot of. I remember the overtime games. I remember Denis Savard staying out to argue in favour of an overtime goal against Quebec as Jacques Demers tried to get everyone off before they could review it; the goal was struck down, but the Habs scored another a few minutes later that ultimately held up. I remember Eric Desjardins' hat trick, including a power-play goal on Marty McSorely's infamous illegal-stick penalty, propelling the Habs to victory in Game 2. I remember Barry Melrose and Pat Burns nearly tearing each other apart between the benches during the hard-fought Campbell Conference Finals, as their two teams went to war on the ice. I remember being blown away when I saw the Islanders win Game 7 over the Penguins, stopping a dynasty in the making dead in its tracks. (I thought for sure that the Habs were doomed if the Pens made the conference finals.) And I remember Patrick Roy, Guy Carbonneau, and the Canadiens parading the Stanley Cup around the Montreal Forum for the last time. Three years later, the Forum would be shuttered, destined to become some Godforsaken mall, but not before I got a chance to take a tour (and correct the tour guide on some piece of Canadiens arcana that escapes me to this day), visit the locker room, sit in Don Cherry's seat on the Coach's Corner set, and drink in as much of the history as my little eight-year-old mind could handle. We were actually supposed to see a game there (guaranteed win night: it was the Lighting), but it was the lockout year of '94, so that wasn't going to happen. It's one of the great regrets of my life that I never got to see a hockey game at the Forum, the home of Morenz, Richard, Beliveau, Lafleur, and a dozen other legends. It would've been the ultimate hockey memory to cherish forever, and I'm deeply saddened that it'll never happen now.

Right around the time the Forum closed, the Habs were actively being run into the sewer. Years of image-conscious and otherwise hockey-stupid trades and poor drafting had caught up to the team, and they missed the playoffs for the first time in a quarter-century. A personality conflict resulted in the trade of the franchise's greatest goaltender since at least Ken Dryden, if not Jacques Plante. A decade of instability was underway. But at the same time, the Oilers were coming out of their own dark age, having missed the playoffs four consecutive years but coming out of it with a number of promising young players. I listened to Game 7 of the 1997 Western Conference Quarterfinals, between the Oilers and the Dallas Stars in my aunt's van. The Oilers, of course, were basically expected to lose in three, but they were still hanging around, with Curtis Joseph stonewalling the Stars at every turn. I can't bring the call to the front of my mind just now, not having heard it since the event itself, but I know we were somewhere between Red Deer and Rocky Mountain House at the time. YouTube helps out here (with both American and Canadian calls): Curtis Joseph makes back-to-back mind-blowing saves in overtime; Todd Marchant, the young speedster, is sprung by Doug Weight. His breakaway goal sends the Stars home empty-handed, propelling the upstart Oilers into the second round for the first time since 1992. In that first video, you can briefly see Kevin Lowe coming off the bench with a grin and a head-shake, as though he can't believe this any more than the rest of us. That moment, frozen in time, cemented me as a hardcore fan, and cemented the Oilers as the #1, whereas previously, I had been agnostic, leaning more towards the Habs if anything, for both their history and more recent success (bear in mind, I was 10 when Marchant scored that goal).

Of course, I continued to follow the Habs through the years, watching La Soiree du Hockey on SRC every Saturday until we got satellite and discovered the joys of watching CBC Montreal, finally telling Hockey Night in Toronto to get stuffed and watching the game in English despite our sheer bloody gall to live outside Quebec and cheer for the Habs. The best of times was in 2002, when the Habs looked like they might just play Cinderella that year, before Michel Therrien's temper got away from him and the Carolina Hurricanes started a four-goal rally on the ensuing power play. Jose Theodore stood on his head that year, and led everyone to believe, for a time, that he was the heir apparent to the throne of Roy, Dryden, Worsley, Plante, Durnan, Hainsworth, and Vezina. But once we got A-Channel Edmonton out in Drumheller, with Bruce Buchanan and John Garrett calling the action, that was it: we watched as many games as we could, and when the games moved to CTV Sportsnet, we were there. My dad and I endured all the narrow misses of the playoffs, the first-round defeats by the too-powerful Stars, and the heartache of the '04 run that wasn't, when Ty Conklin led us to believe that he was the goalie of the future. We suffered through the lockout, and Cal Nichols' none-too-subtle threats to move the team. I tried (and failed) to develop an affection for football. Patience was finally rewarded in 2005 with Chris Pronger. Dad and I could scarcely believe it when we read it. Pronger! And Peca! Conklin was great in '04, and Markkannen was the Martin Brodeur of the RSL during the lockout. This was gonna be great! Okay, so it was great in the end, but it didn't exactly turn out like that. In fact, it almost didn't turn out at all, as we all remember. We also remember just how close we came to having all our dreams come true that spring. But that spring took on special significance for me, as Dad was in the final stages of a battle with stomach cancer: as I've previously stated here, Game 6 of the Oilers-Wings series was the last game we ever watched together. The six weeks that followed were the only thing that kept me sane during the ugliest point in my life, and while the conclusion was a painful disappointment, it was still the best six weeks of hockey I'd seen since those '93 playoffs.

The rest, of course, is history: the trades, the injuries, the losing, the drafting, the holy-shit-what-was-that last spring. I've also gotten back on the Habs "bandwagon" thanks to their improvements over the last couple of years. It looks like I'm now rooting for two young, fast, exciting teams, one with a chance to be a contender now (Montreal), and one that could contend in another year or two (Edmonton). While it'll probably never happen, God help me if they ever meet in the Finals; I might have to skip out altogether to keep my heart and my brain from exploding altogether. Regardless, I don't think I've ever looked forward to an NHL season quite like this before, with neither of my teams expected to suck outright. How many days until we drop the puck again?

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