Canada-raised Marlyn Kasten and her American husband, Kim Kasten, live in North Carolina but say cheering for the Oilers to win the Stanley Cup is a matter of Canada’s national pride.Courtesy of family
This year’s NHL playoffs have already resulted in heartbreak for many Canadian hockey fans, but a swell of patriotism is driving some to temporarily set aside domestic rivalries and cheer for the Edmonton Oilers to finally bring the Stanley Cup back home.
The quest to end Canada’s 32-year Stanley Cup drought has taken on new urgency amid a trade war with the United States and President Donald Trump’s “51st state” comments, readers told the Globe and Mail, and many say cheering for the Oilers to beat the Florida Panthers is now a matter of national pride. The Stanley Cup final starts in Edmonton on June 4.
A die-hard Calgary Flames fans told us he’ll cheer on their bitter Alberta rivals if it means Canada comes out on top. Some Toronto Maple Leafs fans say, after licking their wounds, they want to see a Canadian team win it, even if it’s not theirs. And while some fans told us they wouldn’t cheer for the Oilers – “never in a million years!” wrote one – the vast majority of the more than 150 readers who responded said it’s “Elbows Up” for Edmonton all the way.
At Vancouver’s unofficial Oilers bar, Edmonton fans find a little piece of home during the playoffs
Lifelong Canucks fan Deborah Phelan says she never warmed to the Oilers during the Wayne Gretzky era, and didn’t start coming around to current star captain Connor McDavid until he scored the overtime winner for Canada against the U.S. in the 4 Nations Face-Off earlier this year. But cheering for the closest team to Vancouver was in her DNA growing up, and the retired teacher and counsellor says it was “basically automatic” to start supporting Edmonton after Winnipeg and Toronto’s second-round exits.
Now, Phelan says it feels as though she’s rooting for a new Oilers whose potential Stanley Cup victory would be a win for Canada as well because of “the symbolism and the collective camaraderie that sports can inspire,” the 72-year-old said. “I’d be really happy, given the political climate.”
Many Canadian hockey fans are changing allegiances to cheer for the Oilers, Canada’s last chance at a Stanley Cup, joining Edmonton diehards like these at Vancouver’s unofficial Oilers bar last week.Alison Boulier/The Globe and Mail
For Torontonian Dave Christie, changing teams after the Leafs fell to the Panthers in Game 7 of the second round was a harder transition, but he shared Phelan’s sentiment that the Oilers are an exciting team to watch.
“They’ve got a pretty dynamic roster. I think they play well together and they’ve got a superstar who seems to be able to stand on his head and still get the puck in the net,” said the mining executive, 62, adding that tensions with the U.S. helped his decision.
“With everything going on right now in the world, I think it’d be really good for Canada to have come home. It’s been a long time,” he said.
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There were only two Canadian teams when Marlyn Kasten’s family moved from Scotland to Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., in 1957, and she immediately decided to cheer for the Leafs. The now 74-year-old currently lives in North Carolina after decades of living on and off in the U.S., and says she’s always cheered for the last Canadian team standing – even when the Oilers faced the hometown Hurricanes in the 2006 Stanley Cup final and lost.
But even in that hostile hockey territory, she says it’s always been Canada’s game, and she never forgets where the players tend to come from. “I was so upset and I was in a bar and like all these young bucks are like, ‘USA, USA, USA!’ and I just stood up and looked at them and said, as my mother once said to me in a very Scottish accent, ‘Your Canadians beat my Canadians,’” Kasten told The Globe from her home in Greenville, N.C.
The Canadian-American-British citizen says she and her American husband are once again all in for the Oilers, hoping they can get the job done after heartbreak in Florida last year. With Canadian teams’ games hard to find on TV where she lives – or costly to stream – Kasten says she’s excited to be able to watch the team play before the couple make their planned move to Canada, “the land of the sane,” next year.
“It’s just national pride, it’s just elbows up,” said Kasten.
Oilers fans, growing in numbers as more get behind ‘Team Canada,’ gather outside Rogers Arena in Edmonton before the Oilers’ victory over Dallas in Game 4 of the Western Conference Final.JASON FRANSON/The Canadian Press