Joseph Sereda, centre, and friend Daniel Hegberg, left, cheer for an Edmonton Oilers goal against the Dallas Stars on Wednesday at the Black Frog Eatery, the unofficial but ‘legendary’ Oilers bar in Vancouver.Alison Boulier/The Globe and Mail
Steven Darnell was walking along the cobblestone streets of Vancouver’s historic Gastown neighbourhood on Wednesday evening in search of somewhere to eat dinner, when he saw a sea of copper and blue that led him to a “piece of home” instead.
Hockey fans packed the narrow bar and spilled onto its covered patio, some squeezing knees-to-chest onto a set of metal bleachers facing the game on the giant projector screen. Others hovered at neck-breaker couches just below the big screen, or buddied up with strangers to find a seat and cheer on their team as servers in jerseys wove and bobbed through the boisterous crowd.
But these weren’t Canucks fans hopping on a bandwagon after their home team didn’t make the playoffs. It was Game 1 of the Western Conference final at Vancouver’s unofficial Oilers bar, where Edmonton fans come from all over to cheer on their team.
Edmonton comedian Steven Darnell ran into his old friend, Eden Gresiuk, at the Black Frog, where she’s one of many staff members originally from Edmonton.Alison Boulier/The Globe and Mail
Lured by the Oilers jerseys in the Black Frog Eatery, “we walked over, realized this was the place for us, and then I took two steps in and the waitress is an old friend I haven’t seen in five years,” said Darnell, who was in Vancouver with his friend Kyle Caniff to do comedy shows through the weekend. “It’s hypnotic to be part of a crowd where everyone’s cheering and screaming about the same thing.”
For more than 20 years, the Black Frog has been a little piece of Oil Country – and during last year’s Canucks-Oilers second-round, a refuge – on the West Coast for diehard Edmonton fans and bandwagoners alike. Its previous owner, an Edmontonian, named it after the Black Dog pub he bartended at while studying at the University of Alberta, and it has kept the same spirit under new ownership since September, said front-of-house manager Michelle Thorne-Speir.
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But now the Oilers are Canada’s only hope to bring the Stanley Cup home for the first time in over three decades, the energy in the bar has reached a fever pitch. The bar staff, many of whom are from Edmonton, make a detailed game-plan and the kitchen prepares eight industrial trays of wings in advance, triple their usual numbers even in the busy tourist area. There are no reservations for game days at the Black Frog, only recommendations to get there two hours before puck-drop to ensure a spot rather than a long wait.
With the Oilers in the Western Conference Final, the Black Frog is too busy to take reservations for game days.Alison Boulier/The Globe and Mail
When she realized her husband’s work retreat would coincide with the start of the Western Conference final against the Dallas Stars, Leanne Morin made sure to pack her Mark Messier No. 11 jersey and to get her nails done in Oilers colours before leaving Enoch Cree Nation west of Edmonton. Morin, 48, remembers meeting Messier in 1985 when she was eight years old. “He was just so calm and he had the biggest freaking Colgate smile,” she said. Chad Cardinal, an operator with Enoch Road Construction and Maintenance, says cheering for the Oilers is “not about faith, it’s about loyalty.” As soon as their group landed Wednesday, they dropped their bags at their hotel, donned their jerseys and rode the SkyTrain straight to the Black Frog.
Leanne Morin from Enoch Cree Nation west of Edmonton says Messier has been her favourite player since she was a kid and saw his ‘colgate smile’ in person.Alison Boulier/The Globe and Mail
It was also the place to be for Edmonton-born Daniel Hegberg and Joseph Sereda, who was visiting his friend from Calgary, despite the bleachers being the only seats left in the bar. “It’s legendary,” the two men agreed from the top row. Even after last year’s Stanley Cup final Game 7 heartbreak and the Oilers’ 6-3 loss to Dallas in Wednesday’s Game 1 of this year’s conference final, Sereda says he doesn’t feel anxious this time at all.
“It’s destiny this year,” he said. “We don’t need to worry about a game. What is different from last year is we always come back no matter what.”
Vancouverite and long-time Oilers fan Paul Skelton discovered the bar last year when Edmonton played Vancouver in the second round, and says it’s the team’s underdog mentality that won him start cheering for them over 30 years ago.Alison Boulier/The Globe and Mail
The Oilers’ underdog mentality is what made Paul Skelton a fan when he was living in Saskatchewan in the nineties, and the decades since have been “peaks and valleys like a train wreck you can’t look away from.” Now living in Vancouver, he says the Black Frog is a testament to how that mindset has endured even as the team makes its second deep Stanley Cup run in a row.
“Edmonton is kind of like a blue-collar town, right? The weather’s not the greatest, so you got to have a bit of resilience to live there, and have fun and embrace your team through the thick and thin, and I feel that same attitude here,” said Skelton, who has travelled to Edmonton with his 21-year-old son to watch playoff games the last two years.
“You can see that they’re committed to what it takes to win it this year, not just for them but for the rest of the country. How can you not like that?”