The spirit of the eighties was materialism and consumerism, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, the beginning of the technological revolution, neoliberalism and conservative ideas, glasnost and perestroika, the cold war and the fall of the Berlin wall. Also the Oilers and the Flames, protagonists of the battle of Alberta, one of the great rivalries in the world of sports, with their own character.
Calgary and Edmonton are just 300 kilometers apart in the great prairies of Alberta, the Texas of Canada, a land of fields of wheat and corn that stretch to the horizon, silos, freight trains so long that their beginning is not seen. nor its end, wild ponies, rodeos, oil wells and a libertarian spirit, a bit in the style of the Wild West, of people who do not want taxes or the State to interfere in their lives, where politically there is everything as in the vineyard of the Sir, but generally posh liberals like Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau are detested. Of warm and eternal days in the summer, and icy and tiny in the winter.
A cocktail of oil and ice, that is Alberta, where there are towns with names like Gasoline Alley, and five-dollar bills (as in all of Canada) do not bear the image of a politician or hero of the homeland, but of some children playing hockey. Everybody does it, girls too, from the time they can stand up, in the frozen gardens of their houses to begin with. That was the case of Wayne Gretzky, the best player in history, winner with the Oilers of four Stanley Cups in the eighties –the team, without him, added a fifth in 1990– and whose records (894 goals and 1,963 assists in 1,487 matches) will surely never break.
The rivalry between Calgary and Edmonton - very similar cities of a million and a half inhabitants - is fierce in everything, where is the best life, where is the coldest, where is the best steak eaten, which has the best rodeo, the best Canadian football (similar to American) and, of course, ice hockey. The Oilers entered the NHL in 1979, becoming an instant success under Gretzky and dominating the competition until 1990. The Flames moved from Atlanta in 1980, and the two met numerous times in the playoffs, matchups that put sparks, with elbows, shocks and brutal blows. For eight consecutive seasons, one or the other reached the Stanley Cup finals, and it was said that to win the tournament you had to go through Alberta. It was no exaggeration.
Edmonton never recovered from Gretzky's exile to Los Angeles in 1988, but they currently have a good team, with goalkeeper Mike Smith, Germany's Leon Draisaitl and 25-year-old Connor McDavid, arguably the best player in the world. Calgary is also in form, led by Milan Lucic, Rasmus Andersson, Kevin Rooney and Elías Lindholm. Last May's playoff matchup (Oilers won 4-1) was a revival of those legendary matchups of the '80s. Maybe next spring their paths will cross again.
In Calgary, of course, the red of the Flames dominates, and in Edmonton, the blue and gold of the Oilers, with the rest of the province of Alberta divided equally. This is the case of Red Deer (red deer), where almost all houses and cars have two flags, to wave the one that is most convenient depending on who wins. It is the advantage of being right in the middle of the road between two cities and two teams, between the world of oil and the world of ice.
