Oilers @ Leafs pre-game

Tonight the Oilers take on the (un)mighty Leafs at the Air Canada Centre.
Which, of course will be the 7 pm (EST) game on CBC, as the Leafs own that cushy tv spot every Saturday night on HNIC.

The Leafs are doing a pre-game ceremony to "celebrate" the last time the Leafs won a Cup, way back in 1967.
We all know how well the Oilers track record is when playing a game after a pre-game ceremony. Might as well hand the Leafs two points, mark down a loss for the Oilers and move on to Ottawa without any more injuries.

I would LOVE for nothing more than the Oilers to beat the Leafs ala Pittsburgh Penguins style; an 8-2 slaughtering, mostly cuz I HATE the Leafs more than any other NHL team (yes, even more than the B.O.A. rival Flames and those dirty Canucks), but also cuz the Oilers need to break the jinx of these pre-game ceremony games. And two points for the Oilers would, for obvious reasons, be better than none.

I don't know why the Leafs plan to "celebrate" a 40 year anniversary of futility, but whatever floats your boat. The story in the Edmonton Sun today will enlighten us on this topic.

Oilers injury update: Stoll is still on the IR, Pisani is still questionable.
Moreau is still a long way off; Tjarnqvist could be half-dead for all I care about his injury status (still on the IR for any of you that actually give a crap about Shaggy).

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Turning over a new Leaf


But will Oilers' ceremony jinx strike again?


By TERRY JONES, EDMONTON SUN, February 17, 2007

TORONTO -- The scheduling seems strange.

Tonight they'll celebrate the 40th anniversary of the 1967 Maple Leafs - the last time Toronto won the Stanley Cup - prior to the game here with the Edmonton Oilers.

The Oilers are a team that wasn't even a gleam in Bill Hunter's eye back in 1967 - a team which has won five Stanley Cups and went to Game 7 of the Cup final last year.

The Maple Leafs are a team which has not only not won a Stanley Cup in 40 years, they haven't been to a final.

Edmonton has been to seven.

"There's great irony there," said Oilers GM Kevin Lowe.

"I don't know if I want to go there," said coach Craig MacTavish, who admits growing up in London, Ont., cheering for Dave Keon way back when.

CELEBRATION TIME

MacTavish, who along with Lowe and five other Oilers went to New York and ended a 54-year Stanley Cup drought by the Rangers, said it's an interesting study.

"The '67 Leafs are still being celebrated. It wasn't that way with the '40 Rangers when I got there. They never brought that team out. I think as time passes it becomes less of a celebration and more of a commiseration.

"Not that we didn't hear about 1940. I still can hear the chant from those fans in New York.

"Nineteeeeeen forrrrrrrty!"

Who knows. Maybe 23 years from now there'll be one of these deals in Edmonton to celebrate that 1990 team - the last Oiler team to win the Stanley Cup.

Maybe Edmonton has been in the early stages of what Toronto has been going through for years. There's already been the Boys On The Bus Reunion, the Heritage Classic game and there's yet another glory gang banner raising for Mark Messier only days away.

One member of the 1967 Leafs, a rookie who scored the series-winning goal against Chicago to get them to the final, was Brian Conacher. He spent seven years with Edmonton Northlands.

"It seems like every five years somebody comes up with some sort of recognition," said Conacher.

On March 22 here, there's a big "1967 - A Tribute'' dinner for the Make-A-Wish Foundation. But the on-ice celebration tonight is the first actually staged by the Leaf organization itself and it welcomes Keon back after years of refusing to attend anything involving the organization.

"I know how people in Edmonton might look at this,'' says Conacher. "But in Toronto it's not really a reminder of 40 years of futility.

"I've always said Edmonton is probably the best sports market in Canada. People in Edmonton have such high expectations, whereas Leaf fans seem to live on hope. The tolerance level is lower in Edmonton."

But Conacher reminds fans out West, where Calgary has won a Cup and been in two other finals including Game 7 of the final two seasons back and where Vancouver has been to two finals and went to Game 7 of the final in '94, is that the '67 team is still celebrated out West, too.

'END OF AN ERA'

"People grew up on the Leafs on radio and television out West back then. The Maple Leafs were their team and are still their team for a lot of them."

Besides, he says, there was something about 1967.

"That year was the end of an era. It was the end of the Original Six. There were 10 or 11 Hall of Famers on that team.

"It was Canada's Centennial year. It was Toronto and Montreal in the final as they were so often back then. In Terry Sawchuk and Johnny Bower, two of the greatest goalies in the history of hockey played on that same team. There's a lot more involved than the last time Toronto won the Stanley Cup.''

A twist in all this is that tonight, in a way, it's Edmonton versus the '67 Leafs because the Oilers can't remember the last time they won a game against somebody when a banner was being raised or a pre-game celebration was part of the proceedings.

The Oilers have lost a lot of these deals, including recent banner raisings for Mark Messier in New York and Al MacInnis in St. Louis last year and "the fourth Johnny Bucyk night" as MacTavish put it.

"It seems like we're in the era of the ceremony," he said of coming off one the other day to honour Bucyk's 50-year involvement with the Boston Bruins.




WOW, the Cup looks huge in that picture!
Those Leafs think they are so clever.