At the recent Edmonton premiere of 'Making Coco', Kevin Lowe, in a post-game hot stove setting, talked about a game that he considered to be Grant Fuhr's most important victory. It was the first game of the Stanley Cup Finals of the 83/84 season.
The year before, Edmonton had met the New York Islanders in the Stanley Cup Finals and lost in four straight games.
During the regular season of 83/84, Edmonton met the Islanders three times and lost each game. Now they had to face them again and even though they had plowed through the competition on their way to the finals, there was not a lot of confidence in the dressing room prior to Game One.
Throughout the season, the Oilers were winning games 7-5, 6-4... they'd get goals scored against them, but they'd usually manage to outscore the opposition. In this game, they were destined to only get one goal. To win the game, Grant Fuhr would have to play a perfect game - and he did. The Oilers won 1-0 and left the ice filled with confidence. Although they lost game two in Long Island, they came back to Edmonton and dominated games three, four and five as they won their first Stanley Cup.
From there, the team continued it's dynasty, winning a total of 5 Stanley Cups in 7 years. In 1990, Edmonton teams won the Stanley Cup and the Grey Cup; the city declared itself the City of Champions and the whole town had a swagger. In a league that competed with teams from New York, Chicago, Toronto, Los Angeles, we upstarts were not just competing, we were dominating.
Now imagine... 'what if?'
What if Grant had allowed even one goal in regulation? If the momentum would have swung to the Islanders allowing them to win in overtime, the Oilers would not have left the game with the same confidence. If they had come back to Edmonton down two games, they might have clutched their sticks more tightly, second guessed themselves and could easily have lost the series.
What if... the team had gone to the finals two years in a row, only to be sent away empty handed? They would be known as 'that team' - the one that plays well all season and tanks in the playoffs. Glen Sather would have had no choice but to make trades, never realizing he would be breaking up a core of players that was destined to be the best team of all time.
The city would never have adopted the 'City of Champions' handle which grew to include much more than sports. We might still be searching for our first Stanley Cup, assuming we were lucky enough to still have the team. When the Oilers went through rough years in the 90s with low attendance, maybe the 37 individuals who joined to form the Edmonton Investors Group would have decided there was no appetite for professional hockey here and not have stepped in to save the team from being sold to Houston.
For the record, although this 'what if' scenario came from Kevin, these are not his words. I took some liberties in telling the story and I realize it's pure speculation. There absolutely could have been hundreds of different outcomes had the team lost that first game. They may have rebounded and won after all, but certainly history could have written a much different story than we know today.
