Game 39 preview – Not quite the Battle of days past

There was a time when the two best teams in the NHL resided in Alberta. The Oilers and Flames represented the Campbell Conference in eight straight Stanley Cups between 1983 and 1990 – the Oilers won five time in six appearances, the Flames went one for two. During those years the Battle of Alberta was the best hockey you could find. Their match ups in the Smythe Final was often as good, and sometimes better, than the hockey played in the Stanley Cup Finals. For hockey fans around here those really were the days.

I was 11 when the Oilers hoisted the Cup in 1990 so my memories of those games between these two franchises during their glory days are limited to taped games only. Ironically all the games we had on tape were Oiler wins, I guess those are the only games worth watching. But even though the games weren’t live I could always feel the emotion in the game. What it must have been like in the building I can only imagine.

Now the Battle of Alberta is a battle in name only. There is more animosity in the stands than there is on the ice and that has more to do with what’s at stake than anything else, large quantities of barley soup doesn’t hurt either. With the exception of two surprising trips to the Stanley Cup – the Flames in 04 and the Oilers in 06 – fans on both sides haven’t had a whole lot to cheer about for the last 15 years.

Hope were high in Calgary when the season started. They’d added Bouwmeester to an already formidable defensive corps. But the results haven’t matched the hype. When the Flames take on the Oil tonight they will do so as the eighth place team in the Western Conference. That eighth place spot isn’t one that they won’t hold for much longer if they continue to play like they have this month though. The Flames are an ugly 3-6-2 in December.

But fans in the south should count themselves lucky that they aren’t Oiler fans. With 34 points in 38 games the Oilers will have to play like their hair is on fire to get into the NHL’s second season. If 95 points gets you eighth place, and it usually does give or take a win, the Oilers will need to play almost 0.700 the rest of the way. Thats a pretty tall order for a team playing 0.447 so far this year. Add in that Hemsky is done for the season and it’s starting to more and more like Khabibulin might be forced to have surgey that would end his season and the task becomes almost impossible. So on the 28th of December all that Oiler fans have left to cheer for is more losses and the hopes of a top three pick this June in Los Angeles.

Although it isn’t what it once was the Battle of Alberta does still mean something to me. They’re the games I circle first when the schedule comes out and I make sure I get to all the games here in Edmonton. In three games between the two clubs this season the Oilers are 0-3. And as much as I hope that the Oilers are bad enough to get a very high draft pick in June I still want them to win tonight simply because I don’t ever want the Flames (or really the City of Calgary) to ever win anything.