by Mark Spector
Copyright © 2015 by Mark Spector
All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher – or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency – is an infringement of the copyright law.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication is available upon request
Published simultaneously in the United States of America by McClelland & Stewart, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, a Penguin Random House Company
Library of Congress Control Number is available upon request
All photos in the inserts are courtesy Pro Am Sports.
ISBN: 978-0-771-07806-4
ebook ISBN: 978-0-7710-7807-1
McClelland & Stewart,
a division of Random House of Canada Limited,
a Penguin Random House Company
www.penguinrandomhouse.ca
v3.1
This book is dedicated to my dear wife, Shelka, who encouraged me to take this project on and then doted on me while I wrote, and wrote; to my children, Rudy and Haley, whose father loves them endlessly; to my father, Milt, who gave me my love of sports, and my mother, Ruthe, who taught me that good writing matters and provided me with the guidebooks that helped me to find the right words for this project; and to Nike, my little Schnoodle writing companion, whose expiry date sadly came before the final edit.
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Foreword by Theoren Fleury
1 IRON SHARPENS IRON: The Oilers and the Flames Evolve
2 MATCHING THE OILERS BLUEPRINT: U.S. College Talent Boosts the Flames Roster
3 DISSECTING THE OILERS DYNASTY: Glen Sather and the Art of Experience
4 CLIMBING THE MOUNTAIN: Bob Johnson Fuels the Flames’ Rise
5 LEADING BY INCLUSION: Oiler Mark Messier’s Subtle Direction
6 OF MICS AND MEN: Reporting from the Battle Press Box
7 BEING NEIL SHEEHY: The Battle’s Most Hated Villain
8 UPSIDE-DOWN LAND: The Flames Capture the 1986 Battle
9 THE RIGHT PLAY THE WRONG WAY: Oiler Steve Smith’s Unforgettable Goal
10 STRIPES AND STARS: Reffing the Battle of Alberta
11 CONTAINING THE GREAT ONE: Like Trying to Hug Fog
12 THE MOUNTAIN CLIMBED—FINALLY: The Flames’ Lanny McDonald Hoists the 1989 Stanley Cup
13 STU GRIMSON VERSUS DAVE BROWN I AND II: The Night the Battle Went Too Far
14 TWO HUNDRED FEET AWAY, MILES APART: Flame Réjean Lemelin versus Oiler Grant Fuhr
15 THE LAST GREAT BATTLE: Theo Fleury’s Anger Pours Gas on the Battle’s Fire
Conclusion
Photo Inserts
Acknowledgements
FOREWORD
People talk about destiny, or karma. That certain people were “born into” their role or their job; how, let’s say, a player like Mark Messier was a “born leader.”
Well, I don’t know whether I was born to play in the Battle of Alberta or not. But there hasn’t been a brand of hockey played before or since that suited my game and my attitude toward life better than Calgary versus Edmonton. (Although the “friendly” competition between cities existed long before professional hockey entered the scene, the Battle of Alberta got really intense in the Oilers versus Flames rivalry in the 1980s—and especially bitter in the second half of the 1980s.)
I grew up in Russell, Manitoba, and spent my teenaged years in Saskatchewan, busing across the prairies while playing for the Moose Jaw Warriors in the mid-1980s. I didn’t know it then but learning to survive as a five-foot-six, one-hundred-and-fifty-pound seventeen-year-old in the Western Hockey League was an apprenticeship of sorts for where I was going to find myself as a pro a few years later. It was survival for me as one of the smallest guys in a league full of players like Dave Manson, Ken Baumgartner, Shane Churla, and Todd Ewen.
I remember one time in my first season getting hit by Manson in Prince Albert. Nearly broke me in half, he hit me so hard. It was my first “Come to Jesus” moment in hockey because I knew that that couldn’t keep happening. On the bus ride home that night I thought about how a guy my size was going to survive in hockey the way it was played in the 1980s. I figured out pretty quickly that not getting plastered by huge defencemen was a place to start, but in order for that to stop happening, I had to make them not want to run me every time I had the puck.
In short, I had to become a dangerous little prick. A guy who’d shove his stick down your throat without blinking an eye. Who’d cut your eye out or wasn’t afraid to get even with a full baseball swing. A guy who didn’t give a shit if the hit was clean but only cared about getting even. More than even, actually. Those skills would serve me well later on, as it turned out.
We got most of the Calgary–Edmonton games on TV in Saskatchewan, and I watched as many as a junior kid could, considering we played seventy-two games a season ourselves, plus playoffs. The playoff series, I just remember how intense they were. How much they mattered to everyone—the players, the TV announcers, the fans, and, of course, the players.
The Flames drafted me in 1987, but I didn’t fully understand the hatred between the two teams until I arrived in Calgary in 1989. Then I realized how totally important the rivalry was.
Shortly after I got called up, we played the Oilers in back-to-back games. The first game, I scored my first two NHL goals on Grant Fuhr, on Hockey Night in Canada. The next night we went to Edmonton, and Kevin Lowe tried to take my head off. That’s when I became fully submersed into the Battle of Alberta. I’d gone around him the game in Calgary. He was probably a little bit pissed off.
I knew then that my worth to the Flames would be measured, to a large extent, by how I handled myself against Edmonton. I knew that the Oilers would try to intimidate me. It’s no different than what every junior opponent did. I was small, and I was supposed to go away when they inflicted a little pain on me.
But surviving and thriving in the Battle of Alberta was imperative for me. So I had to make those guys think twice (or three times) before they took a run at me. That’s what made the Battle of Alberta so much fun.
Those games were circled on the calendar. Playing the Washington Capitals on a Tuesday night in Calgary wasn’t going to have the same juice that a Saturday night in either Edmonton or Calgary was going to have. Jeff Beukeboom suckered me once, then bragged about it in the papers the next day. I thought that was pretty low at the time, but to be honest, I likely had it coming. I must have slashed him as hard as I could fifty times before he caught me with that punch.
Looking back through the hatred, the fear, the competitiveness, we made each other better. All of us. Finding those opponents to play against that make you elevate your game or else be left in the dust. Both organizations in the 1980s and early 1990s were model franchises.
If you were born in the 1980s or later, you might doubt that some of the things found in these pages really happened. Well, they did happen, and it’s amazing we all lived to tell these tales. I can only speak for myself, but the attitude I took into every installment of the Battle of Alberta was like Mel Gibson’s in Braveheart. Remember that scene where they ask Mel’s character, William Wallace, what he was doing? He says, “I’m going to pick a fight.”
That’s what the Battle of Alberta was like every night. It’s one of my favourite movie scenes of all time because that was me: “What are you doing?” “Well, I’m going to see if I can pick a fight with someone tonigh
t.”
Somebody once asked me if I would want my own son to experience what I experienced in those games. Of course I would. That was when men were men. You better grow some balls or you’re not going to be very successful playing in those games. And those are the kind of games you want to play in, as a professional hockey player, a professional athlete. The higher the intensity, the more you want to be part of it. Those are the games that make you grow, make you better. You find out what you’re really fuckin’ made of in those games.
When people look back on the history of the game, there is a place that Calgary versus Edmonton holds. I’m not sure there is another rivalry on the same level. People who lived out East, I’m not sure they realize the intensity of the Battle of Alberta. How important it was to the people who lived in Calgary and Edmonton during those years.
It was some of the greatest hockey that has ever been played at a club level. You think about the greatest series, the greatest games every played, you’re always referencing Canada–Russia or Canada–U.S. But from an NHL perspective, there wasn’t a rivalry quite like it.
To walk into the trainers room after a Battle of Alberta game was like walking into a M*A*S*H* unit. And that series in 1991—it doesn’t get any better than that. That was the only Calgary–Edmonton series in which the team that won the series didn’t go on to the Stanley Cup final.
Edmonton couldn’t. Minnesota mopped them up in the next series—not because they were so much better than the Oilers but because the Oilers had nothing left. And we likely wouldn’t have either. We literally kicked the piss out of each other. And it’s ironic that it went to overtime, where Esa Tikkanen scored the winner. That game could have gone on forever and neither team would have backed down.
I have the fondest memories of all the battles within the big Battle. Glen Sather was such a smart hockey man. Jeff Beukeboom and Steve Smith beatin’ the crap out of me every chance they got, and me getting them back with a two-hander every chance I got. Tikkanen, yappin’ at you in whatever language he was speaking. I never figured out what he was saying.
There are so many incredible characters on both sides. Guys like Colin Patterson, Rick Wamsley, who never really got the attention but were so key to the Battle of Alberta. The Oilers had those guys too: Dave Lumley, Dave Hunter. I was standing right there when Dave Brown caved in Stu Grimson’s face that day. Holeee.
I went on to play with Mark Messier, Wayne Gretzky; Steve Smith I played with in Calgary. I played for Sather in New York. They all turned out to be great guys that I learned to have a tonne of respect for. So there was a respect for one another, I guess.
But during the Battle, more importantly, there was a total dislike for one another. They didn’t like me in Edmonton, and that was fine. We didn’t like them either. In fact, we hated them. I’m not sure that anything close to that hatred exists in the National Hockey League anymore. But, boy, how I hated those bastards back then.
This book should have been written a long time ago. Enjoy.
Theoren Fleury
March 31, 2015
Calgary, Alberta
1
The Oilers and the Flames Evolve
“It was real then. There were going to be fights.”
Wayne Gretzky is sitting on the Edmonton Oilers’ bench, watching one of his teammates duke it out with one of the Calgary Flames.
This time it is Kevin McClelland, and the Oilers are losing big-time to the Flames. The last time it was Dave Semenko in a lopsided Edmonton win. The next time? Dave Brown in a tied game. In the Battle of Alberta, the scoreboard changed but the routine stayed mostly the same.
As Steve Smith said, “When you look back and you think about the Battle of Alberta, every time you went into that building, you knew you were going to shed some blood. And hopefully you were going to take some with you.”
Gretzky didn’t have to take, or give, any blood. When you average about three points a game, you get a pass on the whole blood-spilling thing. But on this night, Gretzky had a front-row seat to a fight that, for some reason, he remembers ahead of so many others he’d seen over the years.
“We were losing 7–2, or 8–2. There was about four minutes left in the game, and Kevin McClelland and Tim Hunter drop their gloves right in front of our bench. They’re both tough guys, and they were going at it pretty good,” Gretzky said, now twenty-five years after the fact. “Hunter hit McClelland so hard that his nose shattered. It was almost on the other side of his face. The whole bench just kind of went, ‘Oh my God …’ ”
Among all the castes on a hockey team, fighters are perhaps the most complex breed. Their worth as teammates is measured far less on the result of each bout, assuming they can win their share. It’s more about them being there to put up a fight when a fight is needed, like when you are down by five or six goals.
Whichever team got a lopsided lead in the Battle of Alberta, their tough guys would do exactly what McClelland was doing on this night. Was it kind of dumb? Yes, sometimes—by today’s standards—it got kind of dumb. But this was the 1980s National Hockey League (NHL), a far different place than today’s NHL.
It was a time when the Edmonton Oilers and the Calgary Flames combined for 780 goals in a season (those same two teams might hit 420 today). It was less about defensive systems and Department of Player Safety videos and more about scoring goals and throwing down, when two of the NHL’s best teams were also two of the league’s toughest teams.
In this bout, however, McClelland was getting a bad case of east–west nose from Hunter. He took a big shot, the Oilers bench cringed, and then he did something Gretzky will never forget.
“Without missing a beat, McClelland turns to our bench and says, ‘It didn’t hurt! I didn’t feel a thing!’ ” Gretzky says. “I remember Tim Hunter looking at him, like, ‘Are you serious?’
“It was almost like a piece out of a movie, and it said to us, ‘You guys can do whatever you want to us. We’re not going to back down. We’re going to keep coming.’ We all rose about six inches off the bench. He just made us all that much bigger. I remember after that game, all of us saying, ‘That’s it. We’re not going to lose to this team.’ ”
You cannot capture the Battle of Alberta with one story—or even one series. But the McClelland–Hunter incident encompassed as many elements of the epic Oilers versus the Flames crusade of the 1980s as you could ask for.
It included the greatest player the game has even seen, yet it involved a level of fury that made you want to avert your eyes; a dash of slapstick comedy, as McClelland somehow timed his delivery to the very moment his nostril reached his own ear; and a pinch of wrestling-like thuggery. Like the time Mike Bullard hopped off that stretcher underneath the stands or the night a roundly beaten-up Doug Risebrough used his skates to slice Marty McSorley’s jersey to bits while sitting in the penalty box.
We Albertans, we didn’t have a clue about how good we had it in the 1980s. We laughed at teams like the Toronto Maple Leafs and Detroit Red Wings that would limp through “Death Valley,” a two-game Alberta trip that was pointless in every sense of the word. Back in the day, Albertan hockey fans rode a pretty high horse, which has now turned into a stick pony as both the Flames and the Oilers reside nearer to the bottom of the NHL standings, immersed in rebuilds today, in hopes of one day being as mighty as they were during the 1980s.
Think of it like this: an eighteen-year-old Flames fan in 2014 had not seen his team win a playoff round since he was seven years old. The same Oilers fan has not even seen a playoff game since age nine. There has been one Stanley Cup appearance for their team in each of those fans’ lives: 2006 in Edmonton and 2004 in Calgary. Both ended in identical, heart-wrenching Game 7 losses, followed by a steady decline to that synonym of organizational failure: the Rebuild.
Now, let’s go back to 1983, when an eighteen-year-old kid growing up in Edmonton—which is exactly what I was—had watched his club get swept by the four-time-champion New York Islanders in the Stan
ley Cup. It was, history records, the last time in nearly a decade that hockey’s power base would exist outside of Alberta.
Spring 1984 would see the Flames and Oilers clash in a stunning seven-game series. The Oilers would overcome the Islanders for the first of five Edmonton Stanley Cups in seven years, and from years eighteen to twenty-five in the life of this fabulously spoiled young Alberta kid, no other team would represent the Clarence Campbell Conference (renamed the Western Conference in 1993) in the Stanley Cup than the Oilers or the Flames.
The mission in Calgary, it became painfully clear, was to catch up to Edmonton. The problem was, the Flames did such a fine job of it that the competition just kept making Edmonton better and better. The goalposts never stopped moving. As such, the hockey just got better and better.
“Ali needed Frazier. That top opponent that pushes, and challenges, and makes you better,” Mark Messier said of the Flames. “If you’re an Albertan, you’re having a pretty good time.”
Hockey people would say that the Battle of Alberta began when the Calgary Flames moved north from Atlanta for the 1980–81 season, one year after the Edmonton Oilers had merged into the NHL as one of four survivors from the World Hockey Association (WHA). But no visceral, loathsome rivalry just fires up when two teams arrive in two geographically linked towns. A proper rivalry has to simmer through political decisions, to amateur sports, to fights over services and education. In Alberta, the competition began long before Highway 2—the north–south ribbon of highway between the two cities —was even paved.
In the 1800s, the two settlements fought over which one would get the first Canadian Pacific Railway terminal. Calgary won that round but was sour when Edmonton was named the provincial capital and then designated as the location for the University of Alberta in the early 1900s.
In an early-1980s Angus Reid poll, Calgary finished far ahead of Edmonton as a city Canadians said they would move to, provided they would not lose their standard of living. That prompted Edmonton alderman Ron Hayter, coincidentally a bigwig in the local Boxing and Wrestling Commission, to quip: “Every day spent in Edmonton is as good as a week in Calgary.”
