Hockey's Battle Of Alberta Is Back And As Entertaining As Ever
The path to the Stanley Cup is going through one of hockey's signature rivalries this spring, with the Calgary Flames and Edmonton Oilers squaring off in the NHL's Western Conference semifinals. (The Flames took Game 1 in a wild 9-6 shootout on Wednesday night; Game 2 is Friday night in Calgary.) Not only will the series determine who carries the banner for all of Canada in hopes of ending its painful 29-year Cup drought, but it represents a fierce clash between provincial neighbors with almost as much history, and hostility, on the ice as off.
So with the help of our Elo ratings, let's take a tour through the history of the rivalry, tracing the rise and fall -- and rise again -- of Western Canada's most bitter foes.
Though the two franchises started out at the same time, they took very different paths to what would eventually become an iconic rivalry. The Oilers first played in 1972 as a charter member of the upstart World Hockey Association and were known at the time as the Alberta Oilers, under an early plan (which never materialized) to split home games between Edmonton and Calgary. Rooting itself explicitly in Edmonton -- and changing to a more familiar name -- starting in 1973, the team still found little success in the WHA ... until it bought the rights to a skinny 17-year-old...