Edmonton Oilers fans commemorate their support for the team and joy in their NHL playoff run success in various creative ways.
Some attend games or watch parties in Oilers jerseys, donning blue and orange wigs or tinsel or face paint.
Others celebrate their team artistically, creating tributes that are stunning and, in some cases, evolve to track the team’s playoff progress.
Oilers progressive drawing
Phil Alain — who is philalainartist on tiktok — is slowly drawing a picture of Connor McDavid trying to achieve the goal of holding the Stanley Cup.
Before the playoffs began, he drew McDavid with his arms stretched high with nothing in his hands. After each round, Alain added another section of the cup.
“I’ve been waiting to the end of the round before I draw the next section of the cup,” he explained. “I’ve been doing a quarter of the cup at the end of each round.”
Alain says he watches the games with his kids, waiting anxiously for the result.
“Every series, I’m like: I don’t want to stop my drawing… I really want it to be complete now,” he said.
But he took some heat online. Some Oilers fans said Alain was jinxing the team, which got in his head a little.
“Maybe I’m making a mistake here. Maybe I shouldn’t be doing this,” Alain remembers thinking early on.
“I cannot control the Oilers’ luck. So just do what I gotta do and just have fun with it.”
Alain modelled the pose off Wayne Gretzky hoisting the Stanley Cup, then customized it for this year’s team. Still, he’ll have to make some modifications.
“I have to draw his beard on because he has a beard.”
Sports drawing was something Alain wanted to get back into. He stopped creating art when his wife passed away in 2019. The Oilers making the playoffs inspired him to take it up again.
When it’s all said and done, Alain hopes that McDavid and the Oilers will hoist that cup overhead in real life. Then, he says, he’ll add their names to his drawing through autographs and then auction it off to support Amy’s House.
Amy’s House is a home away from home in Edmonton for cancer patients. Alain started it in his wife’s name after she passed away from cancer in 2019. She was just 38.
Oilers walking stick
Brian Boser has been wood carving since 1996.
He recently designed — in the relief carving style — a walking stick that pays tribute to Alberta veterans as well as the Oilers. Boser’s father is a World War II veteran.
“To bring people’s attention to us people with disabilities, that we have to use different devices in order to help us along,” he explained of his designs.
The walking stick took three weeks to carve. Boser used a machine with bits smaller than a pencil head to make the 3D designs.
Oilers ‘fan cave’ mural
Muralist Ashley Rosenow usually paints creative designs featuring mountains and flowers, but since Oilers playoff buzz has hit the city, she’s been getting a lot more hockey requests.
“I did have someone reach out to me and ask if I could help create the perfect fan-cave for them,” she said.
Rosenow incorporated the Oilers icon in the centre of an explosion design using blue, orange and white.
“I wanted to really captivate the Oilers spirit,” she said. “It was really left to my creative freedom… having this big burst happening here is what I do as a muralist.”
The wall mural took Rosenow and her sister-in-law two days to create, but it wasn’t all work.
“Oh for sure, I’m a big Oilers fan,” she said with a smile.
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