Yesterday, the Edmonton Oilers took on the Calgary Flames in the NHL’s Heritage Classic. Though I’m not so sure you can call it a heritage classic if you don’t run an alumni game with it. Maybe that’s just me, but it turns this more into a stadium series event if there’s no alumni (or heritage) that’s part of the festivities. How cool would it have been to see Doug Weight, Ales Hemsky, Shawn Horcoff, Dwayne Roloson, Tommy Salo, etc., taking on the likes of Iginla, Conroy, Regehr, and Kiprusoff? That would’ve been so exciting and fun to see. Anyways, I rant. The game itself was awesome, and by all accounts, the atmosphere in the stadium was awesome. Start to finish, it was an awesome product that the NHL put together.
Things started off with the players arriving at the rink. All the Oilers, instead of suits, came into Commonwealth Stadium wearing rig coveralls and hard hats. Awesome. The Flames came in wearing overalls with no shirts on, hilarious. Not quite as awesome, but they went for the farmer vibe as best they could. Brett Kissel led the way with the Canadian anthem, and they had military jets do a flyover of the stadium. What an experience already.
Oh, did you hear? Early in the day, it was also confirmed that Connor McDavid was making his way back into the lineup after missing two games with an upper body injury! Fantastic news for Oilers fans! Bad news for Flames fans.
Things only seemed to be getting better for Oilers fans as Brett Kulak, the man from Stony Plain (basically a hometown kid), scored the opening goal (assisted by Kane and RNH) for the Oilers just over four minutes into the game, giving the Oilers a 1-0 lead. Then tragedy seemingly started to strike as the Oilers took two consecutive penalties, going down 5-on-3. However, they killed it off with ease, not allowing Calgary to have even remotely close to a good chance to score. Almost immediately after the 5-on-3 was killed off, the Oilers stormed back the other way, and this time it was Zach Hyman (assisted by Draisaitl) who scored, giving the Oilers a 2-0 advantage in the first.
Wouldn’t you believe it though, the Oilers gave up another 5 on 3 in the first period, this time Calgary scored with a mere 1 second remaining on the 5 on 3 which meant the Oilers had to kill off the last 30 seconds of the other penalty still after the goal. However, just over a minute later the Oilers squashed Calgary’s momentum with a goal of their own. A point blast from Evan Bouchard (assisted by Draisaitl, McDavid) put the Oilers ahead 3-1 going into the second period. Did I mention the Oilers actually looked decent defensively? This game might be the first all season where they looked like the team from last year, that was playoff bound with high hopes for Stanley. A sign of hope we hadn’t gotten yet this season.
Calgary scored halfway through the second period to make it 3-2 against the Oilers and had a good, hard push for most of the second. The Oilers were bending a bit but never broke; they weathered the storm, something they hadn’t been able to do all year yet. They made it to the intermission up 3-2.
As the intermission begin, Albertan band Nickelback took to the stage and rocked for three songs and got the crowd going, from Hanna, Alberta, Nickelback might be the biggest rock band from the smallest town. They absolutely crushed it, I’m not sure who is still on the Nickelback hate train but it has to end, they rock.
Six minutes into the third period, Oilers’ hulking defender Vincent Desharnais scored his first career NHL goal (assisted by Kane and Hyman), a bit of a knuckle puck that took a fortuitous bounce for him and ended up in the back of the net. All smiles for him as he celebrated with the team, giving the Oilers an insurance goal in the third period to go up 4-2. The Oilers then buckled down defensively and didn’t give Calgary much, if anything, to sniff at for the rest of the game until Evander Kane sealed the deal for the Oilers with an empty net goal (assisted by Ryan) to make it 5-2 and secure victory.
Play La Bamba, baby! The Oilers take the Battle of Alberta outdoors and dominate. Time to get ready for Dallas and start rolling, like we know they can.
Rig City Sports 