Why you should jump on the Edmonton Oilers bandwagon

Is your current NHL team leaving you feeling desolate? Were you passed over for a promotion because you asked what a Leon Draisaitl was at the Christmas party? Are you trying to understand why your partner verbally abuses the T.V. on Saturday nights? Choosing a favourite NHL team can be daunting in today’s fast paced, hockey-driven world, but fret no more, this article is just the thing for you.

A simple 53-year-old forgotten natural remedy is making a comeback, and you won’t believe how effective it can be!

The Edmonton Oilers are the answer to all your troubles, and if you have just five minutes, I promise I can change your life forever.

Abilityy to attain bragging rights

There lies within every human the unquenchable drive for survival. 15,000 years ago it was that drive that allowed us to drive off packs of wolves and bring down mighty beasts. In today’s world that drive manifests itself as the desire to assert supposed dominance over friends and colleagues via a group of strangers wacking a piece of rubber more successfully than another group of strangers. That’s who we are though so no use fighting it.

At this very moment, there is only one fanbase (roughly 102 people) who can boast more impressive recent success than the Oilers, and that is the Florida Panthers (un)faithful.

By jumping on the Oilers bandwagon you can truthfully boast of the Oilers having made the Stanley Cup final the past two years; when people point out that you haven’t actually won, you can say such intellectual things as “I’d rather make it to the finals than miss the playoffs” and “the Calgary Stampede is overrated,” and “Eat My Shorts!!!” These are considered logical in sports conversations.

A uniquely dominant history

Picture this scenario: you walk into a sports bar with the precarious composure of one looking for their friends while trying to convince onlookers that they do, in fact, have friends. You strain your neck three degrees past nonchalance to see around a particularly inspirational margarita tower and, massaging your dainty 33-year-old neck, hear a sports puritan declare their distaste for “bandwagons.” Never having hitched a ride with musicians nor their instruments, you wonder at the meaning of this.

If this sounds like you, what that person meant was that they hate people who start cheering for a team as soon as that team has any continued success, or as soon as those around them start frequently talking about that team. Even more egregious are those who continuously switch allegiance to cheer for the current best team.

You may be afraid that if you suddenly start cheering for the Edmonton Oilers you will be labeled a bandwagon, never having mentioned them earlier. No need to worry—the givers of eternal hope and joy, the Edmonton Oilers, have thought about that.

The Edmonton Oilers were an unstoppable dynasty 40 years ago, winning Stanley Cups in 1984, ’85, ’87, ’88, and ’90. Haters will accurately point out that those wins carry no weight with the Oilers of today, but what that does mean is that you can easily say that your parents were Oiler’s fans and that you inherited your love of the Oilers from them. This is the most honourable way to come by fanaticism and is never questioned.

The Oilers carry an illustrious reputation for a couple reasons.

First is that they are tied for the most Stanley Cups among non-Original Six teams. The Original Six teams are some of the oldest teams in the NHL, the youngest being the Detroit Red Wings, Chicago BlackHawks, and New York Rangers who all joined in 1926. The Original Six were the only six teams in the NHL from 1942–1967. Excluding those teams, and even including the New York Rangers, the Oilers are tied for the most successful Stanley Cup history.

Second is that they have one of the most impressive all-time rosters of all time, starting with the Great One, Wayne Gretzky, the greatest player to ever play the game. He currently holds 55 NHL records, some of them, like his 2,857 total points, will never be broken. My computer doesn’t currently have enough free space for me to list all of his accomplishments so I’ll just say that he is arguably the most dominant athlete at their sport of all time.

All time greats like Mark Messier, Paul Coffey, Jarri Kurri, Grant Fuhr and many many more round out a list of truly impressive Edmonton Oiler alumni.

The most electrifying NHL team

If I were just trying to get a non-hockey fan to watch hockey, I would tell them to watch and cheer for the Edmonton Oilers. There are no two ways about it.

Connor McDavid is the most exciting player in the NHL right now. Realistically, he is the most exciting watch of all-time. Players like Richard, Howe, LaFleur, Orr, Gretzky, Lemieux, Hasek, Datsyuk, Crosby, Ovechkin, and Kane who displayed heart, strength, speed, vision, acrobatics, stickhandling, brains, shooting, and creativity have all been captivating, but we have never seen a player so offensively dominant as Connor McDavid in the history of the game. With blazing speed, lightning-fast acceleration, spectacular stickhandling, and prescient creativity, McDavid can make something electric happen at any time and, combined with Draisaitl’s laser accurate shooting and passing, there is no team more fun to watch than the Edmonton Oilers.

Sustained success

You may be worried about your future as an Oilers fan. The NHL enforces a hard salary cap so that each team can only be paying it’s collective roster a maximum amount of money, and no more. For this reason, rich teams can’t continuously dominate the NHL like certain European Soccer teams do their respective leagues. The best teams in the NHL naturally change over time for many different reasons.

So yes, eventually the Edmonton Oilers will make their way to the bottom of the league once more but you likely have some time before that happens. While McDavid has yet to sign an extension in Edmonton, it is expected that he will do so. His partner in crime, Leon Draisaitl, has signed a long contract to stay in Edmonton, along with all-star defenceman Evan Bouchard. Those all-stars combined with a strong supporting cast and a few young and promising rookies give the Oilers a good chance of being competitive for the foreseeable future.