Oh, Canada... Finally!

Last night we had one of the greatest scenes in sports. No not the club championship at your local municipal golf course where Brain won it for the 3rd year in a row… Bleeping Brian with his fancy clubs, fancy balls and golf lessons with old tour pro Tom Lehman. Maybe I should go back to school and get my accounting degree so I can be Tom Lehman’s personal accountant, just so I can get free lessons. Bleeping Brian… I’ll get him one of these years. Sorry I had to get that off my chest, anyways I’m Talking about the Edmonton Oilers punching their ticket to the Stanley Cup final for the first time since 2006. If you ever hear someone talking about how sports don’t mean anything to a city or hell, even a country, tell those people to open their phones and go to YouTube to look up the videos from Edmonton last night and they will probably still call it stupid but just maybe they can see another side to the sports world. It was truly one of the most beautiful moments you can have and that was only the Western Conference Finals. Hockey just means so much more in Canada and it’s so fun to watch them celebrate a victory like that. I can only imagine if they actually win the cup…

Edmonton didn’t get the Conference clinching win in the normal fashion they are used to by dominating with their high-flying offense lead by Canadian native Connor McDavid. But instead, they won with great goal tending from their 24-year-old net minder Stuart Skinner and high percentage shots by Connor McDavid and Zach Hyman on the Oilers seemly unstoppable powerplay, which was top 5 during the regular season ending with a 26.34 conversion rate. Both The Oilers goals from McDavid and Hyman came in the first period which awarded The Oilers defense the freedom to sit back and make sure Dallas wasn’t going to get any high percentage shots off on the Oilers young net minder.

The Oilers ended the game with only 10 shots on goal to Dallas’s 35. That’s right you read that correctly. I had to rub my eyes like I was just waking up from a night on the town drinking nothing but Mango White Claws and shots of tequila to make sure I wasn’t dreaming when I saw that stat line. I mean, Dallas outshot the Oilers 3-1 and still lost the game. Stuart Skinner, with a little help from his good friends, the posts, was a mastermind last night with 34 saves on 35 shots. He looked a lot like fellow Oiler and Conn Smythe winner Bill Ranford during the 1990 season, with some of the saves he was making. With the way Stuart played last night it reminded me of one of my favorite childhood songs that I used to listen to on repeat while eating Popsicles in the backyard…

“Old McDavid had a Goalie E-I-E-I-O

And on that Goalie, he had some pads E-I-E-I-O

With a pad save here and a pad save there

Here a pad save, there a pad save, everywhere pad save

Old McDavid had a Goalie E-I-E-I-O

And on that Goalie, he had a glove E-I-E-I-O

With a glove save here, and a glove save there

Here a glove save, there a glove save, everywhere a glove save

Old McDavid had a Goalie E-I-E-I-O”

After a barrage of wrist shots from what seemed to be every winger on Dallas’s entire team like they were trying to break down a castle wall, the final horn sounded inside of Rogers Place with the Oilers winning 2-1. But what happened next was truly a sight to behold inside and out of Rogers Place. Deafening roars filled the whole entire city of Edmonton. I had to turn down my tv’s volume, it was so loud, it was like you took every screaming teenager and speaker from a Taylor Swift concert and put them directly inside of your eardrums at max volume. Strangers hugging in the stands like they were long lost cousins seeing each other for the first time in 30 years. Babies were being tossed 20 feet in the air, to eventually be caught like Stuart Skinners glove saves. People jumping for joy creating the largest earthquake Edmonton has seen in over 50 years. Grown men hugging other grown men while tears dripped down their faces like a broken faucet that eight different plumbers have now looked at and still can’t fix. To be honest, it brought a slight tear to my eyes seeing people come together like that in joy for their hockey team. What a night for hockey, what a night for Edmonton and what a night for Canada.

But that was only the Western Conference Finals, and the job is far from done. There is a team that resides in a sub-tropical climate with a Russian goaltender that is hotter than the white sands at Pompano Beach, who were in the Stanley Cup Final last year that would love to rain on Edmonton’s parade more than a humid summer afternoon in Miami. The Florida Panthers and their exact opposite climate in which hockey was birthed in, stand in the way of a Canadian team lifting the cup for the first time since The Montreal Canadiens lifted it back in 1993. To have a south Florida based team in the way of Canada lifting a cup must piss of the Canadians so much, which makes for a great story in itself, then you slap shot in two great teams with great players scattered throughout the ice and you my friend have the makings of one hell of a Stanley Cup Final.

Canadian hockey teams and their fan bases care so much about hockey and the Stanley Cup that it would be incredible to see one lift the cup over their tired bodies and minds once in my lifetime. So, I know who i'll be rooting for since Minnesota is practically Canada, and we have a hockey kinship with our northern brothers that is stronger than the blood pact of Grindelwald and Dumbledore. Also, it might be the fact that I have a future on Edmonton that I bet back in October… but that’s beside the point… it’s definitely the Canadian kinship that I’m rooting for...

Thanks For Reading and Enjoy The Stanley Cup Final