Edmonton Oilers Close Down Rexall Place
By Kurt Leavins
The Edmonton Oilers will announce the list of invitees to training camp (Rookie Camp, in particular) in the next few days. When those details pop, all hell will break loose in Oil Country, as it signals that another hockey season is truly just around the corner. Our hopes and dreams will again start high, and we’ll brace for the ride ahead of us.
Sadly, in many ways, it will also be the last year in the old barn. And as excited as I am about Rogers Place, my family and I will miss Rexall. Many good times (yeah, as well as many frustrating ones) have been spent there. Here’s hoping they give the Grand Old Lady a fitting send-off.
With that: 9 Things the Edmonton Oilers should do at Rexall Place, before the final siren sounds…
9. Open the front doors when they are supposed to open. It has always frustrated me that, as fans, we can trudge through a foot of snow and then shiver by those damn blue doors, while the staff at Northlands takes its bloody time, inside, where it’s warm. It’s a ticket scanner…how hard can it possibly be?
8. Give the Northlands ushers medals. All of ’em. Especially on late weekend games, the crap that they have to endure from some of the people who are slobbering drunk by the 2nd Intermission? Wow. Cutting off beer Sales at the start of 3rd is comical. “Those” fans are gunned well before that.
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7. Having said that, for the love of god, let everyone in the front row put their drinks on the ledges during warm-ups. I have never been able to figure out where the harm is in Little Susie putting her Sprite on the bumper, while she takes a picture of Jordan Eberle. Surely security has better things to do.
6. Raffle off the print of Rod Stewart in that leopard skin outfit, for some lucky charity. I’ll bid. I would have walked right past my section how many times, if it hadn’t been for Rod and his blonde mop staring me in the face. And while you’re at it, raffle off the Tina Turner one, too. It’s killer-diller.
5. Give Bob & Jack a new script, for their old “here’s where you can and can’t smoke, and for the love of god, watch out for pucks” routine, that runs on the Jumbotron each night. My kid & I know it off by heart, by now. My son even elbows me EXACTLY when Bob jabs Jack in the ribs. Ouch!
4. Let us leave the caps on our beer cans. I find it confounding that so much effort can be put into making it difficult for me to get to my seat without spilling all over myself, yet any yahoo can launch a jersey onto the ice without security taking so much as a fast step toward them. Caps on! Caps on!
3. Stop discriminating against North-siders! The parking attendants make it so bloody easy to turn South, the folks who live in Millwoods & Ellerslie can get home in 15-20 minutes, but oh no…if you need to get to the Yellowhead, you have to go South…FIRST?? Asinine.
2. Hang Ryan Smyth‘s jersey from the rafters. If any one of the Edmonton Oilers in history best epitomized the fans who sat in the majority of those seats, over years, it was him. He wasn’t fancy or pretentious, but worked damn hard night in and night out, to bring home the bacon. Sounds like an Edmontonian to me.
1. Shield my eyes when the tear the Old Girl down. Yeah, the steps are steep, the lineups for beer & bathrooms is a mile long, there’s 30 years of gum under my seat, and the bathrooms smells like the barns I used to help clean out on the farm as a kid. But as much as I am anxious to replace it, and get some long-awaited elbow room…
I’ll miss her. I’ll miss her a lot. And that’s for damn sure.