‘There’s so much emotion’: Stan Bowman talks about the pressure of playing for the Oilers

It’s no secret that playing in Edmonton means stepping into the pressure cooker. The city lives and breathes hockey 365 days a year, and when you’re suiting up for the Oilers, you’re not just playing for a team — you’re playing for a ride-or-die town that surfs the highs and lows every single night the boys are on TV. That’s always been true around here, but in a world of constant connection, that spotlight has gotten a whole lot more intense.

During a recent sit-down on the 100% Hockey Talk podcast, Oilers GM Stan Bowman addressed the reality of playing in a market like Edmonton, speaking candidly about the challenges his goaltenders face when things aren’t always going well. While defending his decision not to bring in a new goalie over the summer, Bowman touched on something bigger — the weight of public opinion and how it can spread like wildfire on social media.

“There’s so much emotion, and there’s so much passion, but there’s also sometimes just so much noise out there,” he said. “Twenty years ago, there was just as much emotion and noise, but there was really no platform for these people to connect… Now, when someone yells out their window, they can connect to millions of people at one time.”

It’s a fair point. The passion for the Oilers in this city hasn’t changed in decades — it’s always been off the charts — but what is pretty new is the reach within a fanbase that’s more connected than ever. A single tweet, post, article, or comment can gain traction in minutes, and criticism that used to stay in your basement, group chat, or at the bar gets amplified and echoed across timelines, feeds, and comment sections. And for the players — especially the goalies — that spotlight can be red hot.

And while we’re as dialled in as any fanbase in the league, the noise that comes from us isn’t always fair. Edmonton’s goaltending tandem helped backstop the team to back-to-back Stanley Cup Finals, but there are times on socials when you’d think Stuart Skinner and Calvin Pickard have never won a game. Getting to the finals twice in a row is nothing to sneeze at. In fact, it’s something only one other city in the league can say right now, with the obvious difference that they got to celebrate while we’re asking what happened. And yet, because the Stanley Cup still hasn’t come back to Edmonton since 1990, the microscope remains focused on what went wrong.

“I think to change something just to change it, I don’t know that I’ve ever been a big fan of that,” Bowman explained. “You have to be confident the change you’re making is an improvement.”

If I’m reading between the lines here, Bowman is saying the easy move might have been to switch things up in net just to calm the waters and get a fresh face between the pipes. But change for the sake of change isn’t how you build sustained success. We’ve lived through plenty of off-seasons where we thought the Oilers won the summer only to have things blow up in our faces months later. The challenge Bowman is facing here, of course, is convincing the masses that sometimes the best move is no move at all.

That’s not always an easy sell in Edmonton, especially when so many of us have the goaltending singled out as the major reason the Oilers aren’t Stanley Cup champs. And that passion is a huge part of what makes this place so special. The Oilers matter here. Every game matters. Every shift matters. Sites like Oilersnation survive because the passion in the fanbase allows us the opportunity to do what we do, and I’m forever grateful for that. The jerseys aren’t just merchandise — they’re a uniform that unites most of Northern Alberta — and having a community with expectations as high as ours can lead to some unhinged reactions for good or for bad.

“I think that’s just part of the world that we’re living in today. I don’t know if it’s good or bad. It’s the society that we’re all part of. And, you know, I think there’s a lot of elements to social media that are a big reason for that. I think there’s tons of benefits of social media. But there are some downsides too.”

But that same passion can boil over, especially when things don’t go our way. And right now, after two consecutive losses in the final, the sentiment for some folks around the goaltending is turning from a red flag into a rolling bowl. This is a team built to win, but many of us will point to the chain only being as strong as its weakest link. And right now, a lot of people see the goaltending as that flimsy piece. The core is in its prime, the Cup window is open, and the fan base knows we only have a finite period available to get the job done. When that pressure gets filtered through social media, it can create a storm that’s tough to weather, regardless of where a guy plays or how long they’ve been around.

“Even if they have no credibility and don’t know what they’re talking about, there’s a lot of other people and that’s the world we have to live with. So we can’t sit here and say it’s bad because there’s tons of great sides to it. But I think that is the downside, which is the passion and the emotion of the fans and the media has allowed some of this stuff to probably get out of hand.”

Bowman isn’t wrong to point out that we live in a different world now, and that connecting with our favourite team is now easier than it’s ever been. Everyone has a voice, and sometimes the loudest ones aren’t always right, but that’s the double-edged sword of being a fan in 2025 — connection comes with consequence. And in a city like Edmonton, where the love for our team runs as deep as it gets, the volume isn’t going down any time soon. That said, being on social media isn’t unique for Oilers fans. Every fanbase in every league faces these same challenges, issues, and emotional rollercoaster that is being a pro-sports fan, but I also think it’s fair to question some of the takes we put out there, especially when they’re getting personal or downright dangerous.

So what’s the solution? I think it starts with balance. The same fans who are critical today will be chanting your name tomorrow — we know that’s true — and that’s part of what makes this market so much fun. I’ve been to markets where the fans don’t care much about what’s happening on the ice, and I wouldn’t want to be anywhere other than a city like Edmonton, where the fans care about the team’s success more than anything. In my opinion, there is no greater fanbase in the world, and I’ll argue that point until the day the milk goes bad. Be passionate, be loud, be engaged, but let’s fall off the rails and turn into Leafs fans.

I think we can all do a better job of taking a minute to consider what we’re putting out into the world. Playing in Edmonton isn’t for the faint of heart — that passion is what makes it great — but I do think a bunch of us could be a touch more balanced. Because at the end of the day, even though this is the form of entertainment we staple into our lives, we’re just talking about a hockey team. The guys on the ice aren’t robots or feeling-less clones. Even though they say they don’t read social media, we all know they do. And while the volume on social media is built on real passion, it’s important to get outside and touch some grass sometimes before being mad about a missed save turns into something way darker than what happened on the ice.