Edmonton Oilers: Ticketnest

                                                                                         

The Edmonton Oilers-a professional ice hockey team located in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Edmonton Oilers play in the National Hockey League (NHL). The Oilers supervised the 2006-07 NHL(http://www.ticketnest.com/NHL.php ) season as the defending Western Conference Champions.

It was in the year of 1972 the Alberta Oilers united the World Hockey Association as a founding member. Bill Hunter owned the team originally. Formally Hunter had owned the Edmonton Oil Kings plus founded what would become the Western Hockey League; unluckily his struggles to get professional hockey to Edmonton had been rejected by the NHL. Initially named, the Alberta Oilers due to the plan to split their home games between Edmonton and Calgary after the Calgary Broncos folded. For diverse reasons, most probably financial or maybe the possibility of letting easier expansion of either the NHL or WHA to Calgary, Edmonton Oilers played all of its games in Edmonton, thus changed their name to imitate this the following year.

Instead of the average results in the standings, the team proved famous with the fans, behind stars such as defenseman and team captain Al Hamilton, star goaltender Dave Dryden, and forwards Blair McDonald and Bill Flett. The team's performance really improved in 1978, when the new owner Peter Pocklington decided and carried out one of the greatest trades in hockey history, getting an already-aspiring superstar Wayne Gretzky plus goaltender Eddie Mio and forward Peter Driscoll, from the Indianapolis Racers for a token sum. Gretzky's first and only WHA season, 1978-79, saw the Oilers accelerated to the top of the WHA standings, stamping a league-best 48-30-2 record. Moreover, Edmonton's regular season victory did not interpret into a championship, as they fell to the rival Winnipeg Jets in the Avco World Trophy Final. Young Oilers enforcer Dave Semenko gained the last goal in WHA history late in the third period of the final game.

The team joined the NHL for the 1979-80 seasons, with fellow WHA teams Hartford Whalers, Quebec Nordiques, and the Jets. Out of all these four teams, Edmonton was the team that didn’t change it’s name as well as location otherwise the Nordiques changed their name to the Colorado Avalanche in 1995, the Jets became the Phoenix Coyotes in 1996, and the Whalers became the Carolina Hurricanes in 1997.

Having young gems like Wayne Gretzky, Mark Messier, Jari Kurri, Paul Coffey, Glenn Anderson, Grant Fuhr, and Kevin Lowe, the Edmonton Oilers emerged as one of the greatest teams in hockey history with their domination of the NHL towards the mid-to-late 1980s. Various experts judge the Oilers from that very time not only to be the best team ever in the long history of the NHL, moreover also one of the best sports teams ever, and this statement is witnessed by a Sporting News poll recently in February 2006 when the 1987-88 Oilers were listed as one of the top-five teams from the last 120 years.

Now about the uniform of Edmonton Oilers in 1972 the uniform design consisted on the conventional colors of blue and orange, though it was quite reversed from their more common appearance in later seasons, as later orange remained the dominant color and blue used for the trimming. In the season of 1972 season for at least first few games, instead of player names the word 'ALBERTA' was written on the uniform. But after it was vivid that the team would play exclusively in Edmonton, the player names replaced the word “ALBERTA”. Whereas the jerseys featured the player numbers high on the shoulders instead of on the upper sleeve.

In 1975-1976 The jersey’s design was altered in 1975-76 to a bluer base with orange trim, though with some minor differences. The logo that presented on programs and promotional material continued to be the same; but the logo that featured on the home jersey had a white oil drop, on a dark orange field, along with the team name written in deep blue. In addition thes away jersey design had the orange-printed logo that many mistakenly attribute to the entire history of the WHA Oilers. In almost all other sides, the jerseys were similar to the dynasty-era form that it is known throughout the hockey world.

In 1979 when Edmonton Oilers plunged to the NHL, the substitute logos were removed and the jersey took its most popular appearance, well the logo occasionally appear a bit different on a few vintages of the jersey (1979, 1986, 1990). The basic design stayed untouched till 1996, when the blue and orange were replaced by midnight blue and copper. Besides this other changes done to the jersey at that time were the deletion of the orange shoulder bar and cuffs from the away jersey, plus the addition of the "rigger" alternate logo to the end of the shoulder bar on the home jersey, and also the equivalent position on the road jersey. After a year, the shoulder bars were discarded from the home jersey too, making the Oilers' sweater a modern look.

The introduction of the third jersey containing a logo designed by Spawn creator and Oilers co-owner, Todd McFarlane, was a very controversial move that proved to create negative reactions to other teams' designs in 2001. Though there was always some contempt towards both the "rigger" logo and McFarlane's "Blades" logo because it seemed to meant to symbolize elements of the Oilers' past, whereas the navy, silver, and white design is usually considered a success, there are no inclinations for it to become the basis for the team's primary jerseys, as it has been done formally by the Dallas Stars and San Jose Sharks.
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About the author:
Sara grew up in Kansas and after moving to Carlsbad, CA, relates to Dorothy of the "Wizard of Oz" fame. No surprise that she loves theater including "Wicked". Sara is a staff writer for Ticket Nest ( www.ticketnest.com ) and enjoys writing about her travel, theater and concert experiences. She can be reached at sara@ticketnest.com


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