My love for the Edmonton Oilers can be broken up into four phases – entrance of the Oilers into the NHL in 1979, their first Stanley Cup in 1984, the Stanley Cup run in 2006, and the McDavid Era from 2015 and beyond.
The subject of today's article is about the third phase: The Oilers miracle Stanley Cup Finals run of 2006.
Phase 1: Entrance of the Oilers to the NHL in 1979
In 1975, I had just moved to Canada from a small country called Guyana in South America. We immigrated to Montreal and endured going from +30 C in Guyana to -30 C in Montreal. It was fun change seeing snow, hearing French and being exposed to a different culture in Montreal but it was not what my parents wanted.
So, we bused it from Montreal to Edmonton after the summer Olympics in Montreal in 1976. The climate in Edmonton was not that different from Montreal but my love for hockey started two years later when the Oilers joined the NHL in 1979. I only followed cricket at the time, so hockey was very new to me and it was amazing to watch humans gliding on ice!
Like every Canadian, I started to collect hockey cards, was fascinated by the statistics on the back of the card and started to recognize who were the highly skilled hockey players in the NHL. I enjoyed watching Oilers hockey games on ITV for that first season and knew we had a special team.
Phase 2: Winning Stanley Cup in 1984
Unfortunate for me, I moved to Nigeria, Africa in 1980 for junior high school and missed watching the team become a powerhouse of players and also missed the exploits of a young Great One. Moving to Nigeria came with field hockey, no snow, no ice hockey rink and no Oilers to watch on TV. I was sad but would hear about the Oilers rise in the years after I moved to Africa in broadcasts over the radio through Radio Canada International.
On May 19, 1984 I listened to the Stanley Cup final game five on Radio Canada International from Nigeria and heard my team win their first Stanley Cup. It was amazing to hear that from so far away and I think I was the only one happy to hear them win in all of Africa! I moved back to Canada in June 1984 and to Edmonton to witness 4 more cup wins to 1990.
Phase 3: The miraculous Stanley Cup run of 2006
Between 1995 and 2005, I lived in Boston, MA and in London, UK. I followed the Oilers during those years on TV and online and they made the playoffs six times during my decade away mainly losing in the first round. I moved back to Edmonton in 2005 and had about a month to kill before starting my job as a new professor at the University of Alberta.
The summer of 2005 was a special one as the city and the league was starved for hockey due to the lock out the year before. I heard two names that would change Oilers history – Michael Peca and Chris Pronger. The Islanders traded their captain, Michael Peca, to the Edmonton Oilers for center Mike York while Oilers acquired Chris Pronger from St. Louis for defensemen Eric Brewer, Doug Lynch and Jeff Woywitka.
It was an amazing few days in early August when Peca and Pronger arrived and I went to the press conference to announce their arrivals. No one realized the impact those two players would have, how they would perform in Edmonton and what a ride that 2005-2006 team would take the city and Canada on.
The season was a particularly difficult one as the Oilers struggled to put a string of wins together. They did not seem like a team that could make the playoffs. Ten teams had over 100 points including the Ottawa Senators (113 points), Carolina Hurricanes and Dallas Stars (112 points each) and the 124 point No. 1 team Detroit Red Wings.
All those teams had great seasons, with some scoring more than 300 goals and winning last ten games records towards to the tune of 9-0-0 (New Jersey Devils) and 8-1-0 (Detroit Red Wings) to mention a few. Edmonton had 95 points and a record of 4-3-1 entering into the 2006 Stanley Cup playoffs but they had a hard season with seven losses in a row in October, four losses in six games in February and nine losses in 16 games in March and four losses in eight games in April and 10 of those losses in overtime.
These statistics did not get them points that was needed for making the playoffs (Hockey-Reference.com). They were in a race with the Vancouver Canucks who had a 3-7-0 record to finish the season with 92 points. One or two more wins by the Canucks would have eliminated the chance for the Oilers to compete in the Stanley Cup playoffs.
But, they did make the playoffs in 2006 and, interestingly, the Western Conference made history in the first round when all four series were won by the lower-seeded teams and all four series in the Eastern Conference were won by the higher-seeded teams.
The eighth- and lowest-seeded Oilers would end up winning the Western Conference and a ticket to the Stanley Cup Finals. Another interesting fact was, that year, we saw four Canadian teams qualify for the playoffs that was not repeated until 2013 and exceeded in 2015 with five Canadian teams making the playoffs. So, the NHL playoffs in 2006 had some unique events.
If you look at the roster of the 2006 Oilers playoff team, a few players were noticeably stars and one bonafide superstar. Shawn Horcoff, the captain, had the year of his career, as well as Ales Hemsky and Ryan Smyth. Fernando Pisani had 14 goals in 24 games (with a 28.6 shooting percentage) and 10 players on the Oilers roster had 10 or more points in the playoffs. Oilers were 3rd and 4th in playoff points on the leader board.
So, many high caliber performers indeed. The one superstar we had was Chris Pronger with 21 points, third to only 28 points by Eric Staal and 26 points by Corey Stillman. The Carolina hurricanes had bonafide superstars in Eric Staal, Rod Brind’Amour, Mark Recchi, Doug Weight and Andrew Ladd to mention a few.
Round 1: Oilers vs The Detroit Red Wings
The first round saw David vs Goliath…the 95 points, 41 win team vs 124 points, 58 win team! What a series it was. No one, and rightly so, gave Edmonton a chance in hell in beating the Detroit Red Wings. Behind the strong goaltending of Dwyane Roloson (aka “Rollie the goalie”, a goalie they acquired at the trade deadline) Edmonton won a lot of the on ice battles through sheer grit and desire to take down the No. 1 team in the regular season.
They Oilers pushed the Red Wings to two double overtime games and the rest were really one goal games. Edmonton would have 4 wins in 6 games to eliminate the President’s Trophy winning team. The desire and grit had started…
Round 2: Oilers vs San Jose Sharks
It was clear in the Detroit series that the Oilers were playing as a team unified in their desire to create chaos and upsets. They were the eighth- and lowest-seeded team in the playoffs, so they had to prove themselves better in each round. And they did it again in Round 2 against a team that was considered an equal to them with 99 points in the regular season.
This round was won again by the unsung heroes now becoming stars on the Oilers in these playoffs (Horcoff, Hemsky, Smyth) and superstar Pronger (all with 5-7 points in this series). They eliminated the San Jose Sharks in six games including a triple overtime game 3 with Horcoff scoring the OT goal. The desire and grit continued to grow exponentially…
Round 3: Oilers vs Mighty Ducks of Anaheim
The Oilers met another team that finished within a similar amount of points in the Ducks (98 points) and the team that Pronger went to the very next year. They quickly went on to have a 3-0 lead in the series before winning it in five.
The wins were close ones but the strong goaltending of Roloson again allowed them to eliminate the Ducks and punch a ticket to the Stanely Cup playoffs for the first time since 1990 when they won their last Stanely Cup against the Boston Bruins. The final test of the grit and desire of the team was to come…
Round 4: Oilers vs Carolina Hurricanes
The Hurricanes path the Stanley Cup playoffs was very different from the Oilers. They had finished with 112 points, good for fourth in the league behind the Dallas Stars. Carolina had good odds to win the cup and to make it to the Stanley Cup finals.
The final round of the playoffs was also somewhat of a David and Goliath showdown but also was not. By round four, many critics were supporting the Oilers in their miraculous quest to win the Cup. They had proven themselves worthy of being in the finals, proven that a team of unsung heroes can win with grit, desire, team play and belief!
The Oilers were outscored 13-7 in the first four games and down 3-1 in the series. What made it worse was the Conn Smythe performance of Dwyane Roloson came to an end with Andrew Ladd crashed into him in game 1 to take him out of the game.
He had torn his ligaments in his right knee in the crash during a tie game of 4-4. Ty Conklin came into the pressure cooker of game one and lost the game by allowing a Rod Bind’Amour goal. Conklin was not ready for playoff hockey and was a distant second to the play of Roloson and only played that game. Jussi Markkanen would step in for the rest of the cup final.
By game five and with their No. 1 goalie out, the Oilers were down but not out with lots of grit and desire left. They would win the next game in overtime on a Pisani shorthanded goal at 3:36 of OT in Carolina to send all packing back to Edmonton for game six.
The Hurricanes we flat in game six and the Oilers soundly won the game 4-0 on goals by Pisani, Torres, Smyth and Horcoff. It was a solid performance by a team poised to make the come back complete in game seven. They had given all they had by game six and battled their way to play a game seven in the Stanley Cup finals.
Pisani was a star again scoring early in the third period to make it 2-1. Markkanen played well enough to keep them in the game. They Oilers gave it all they could give in trying to tie game seven but an empty net goal by Justin Williams at 18:59 of the third period extinguished the lights of the miraculous season by the Edmonton Oilers.
They had shown the hockey world that an eighth seeded team can perform well in the playoffs. With a list of above average players in the 2006 playoff roster, the Oilers demonstrated how grit and desire almost won a championship.
The Edmonton Oilers would go on to miss the playoffs each year thereafter until 2017. Between 2006 and 2015 they were rebuilding the team in a “decade of darkness”. They had acquired the first overall draft picks in 2010 (Taylor Hall), 2011 (Ryan Nugent-Hopkins) and 2012 (Nail Yakupov) but yet, they were not making the playoffs.
They acquired Darnell Nurse in 2013 (the seventh overall pick in the draft) and Leon Draisaitl in 2014 (the third pick in the draft) and then Connor McDavid in 2015 (the first player in the draft). So, luck and smart choices allowed the Oilers to exit the decade of darkness with the acquisition of a generational player in 2015 and list of amazing young talents to possibly build a team for playoff hockey.
Phase 4: the McDavid Era (post 2015)
The impact of acquiring high draft picks (including 4 first overall picks in five years that has never been done in NHL history) was starting to pay off by 2017. The Oilers made the playoffs that year and lost in the conference finals. McDavid had been in the league just two years and was adjusting to the stardom he was having and to need to lead a team to playoff success.
They would miss the next two playoff years to enter back into the playoffs in the 2020 bubble playoff of year in Edmonton. Since 2020, they have made the playoffs every year with game seven and game six runs in the Stanley Cup finals in 2024 and 2025 respectively.
The Oilers have had 45 seasons in the NHL and have made the playoffs 27 times winning 5 Stanley Cups for a 53.3 winning percentage that is impressive. Fun facts from the 2006 miraculous playoff year:
- Dwayne Roloson only played in game one of the finals, but finished the playoff year with a goals against average of 2.33 and a 0.927 save percentage
- The Calder Memorial Trophy in 2006 went to Alex Ovechkin who scored 52 goals and 54 assists for 106 points in his rookie year.
- The Vezina Trophy went to the Calgary Flames goalie, Miikka Kiprusoff who posted a 42-20-11 record with a 2.07 GAA
- The Hart Memorial Trophy went to Joe Thornton after he scored 29 goals, 96 assists and125 points.
- There was no hockey in the 2004-2005 season as it was a lock out year and the entire season was cancelled
The 2005-2006 Oilers team was truly one of the great teams in Oilers history. They almost won the Stanley cup and proved to all that a team of unsung heroes can win. We may never see a team like that again in Edmonton, or the league, but elements of how they worked together as a team, how they had one desire, and how many players lead on the ice can be taken to heart and hopefully used to drive success in future teams.
We hope that is the case for the upcoming Oilers 2025-2026 season to allow them to bring the Stanley Cup back to Edmonton and Canada and make us proud of them as we did in 2006.