Ex-Edmonton Oilers cheer Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, a Cup finalist at last

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When former Oiler Todd Marchant watches the Stanley Cup final these days, he scans the two rosters, intent on cheering for somebody who is finally getting the opportunity that eluded him for most of a lengthy career.

Today, that guy is 31-year-old Oiler forward Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, who has played 881 regular season games in the NHL, all for Edmonton, and has never been as close as this to winning it all.

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“You want that player to win. Those are the guys you root for,” said Marchant, now director of player development and senior adviser with the San Jose Sharks. “You want them to get the opportunity because you never know when you get it again. Corey Perry won with us in Anaheim (in 2007) and he’s been to the Finals how many more times and hasn’t been able to raise the Cup again?

“He was a rookie when he did it, but there was a whole bunch of us who had been in the league awhile and had never won. Scott Niedermayer was the only guy in the locker room who had won a Stanley Cup. We were hungry for that win, that opportunity, and we knew we weren’t going to let it slip away.”

Back in the day, Marchant could have been cheering for himself; a gritty, quick-footed centreman from Buffalo who played 891 of his 1,195 regular season NHL games before winning the Cup with Anaheim in 2007. He started his odyssey by playing 678 regular-season games for the underdog Edmonton Oilers between 1993 and 2003. They never made it past the second round of the playoffs, but he is famously remembered for scoring the Game 7 overtime winner in Dallas in 1987, a goal that capped an upset for the ages and, it turns out, became the pinnacle of modest success for that Oilers era.

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“I look at those teams we played on, and we made the playoffs five out of six years, but we were up against a wall because we were playing against teams that had much bigger budgets and were always able to add players at the deadline,” said Marchant. “We weren’t adding, we were subtracting. We were saying, ‘We can’t afford this guy so we’re going to move him and get some young pieces back.’ And that’s the way it was back then, when there was no salary cap.

“The Dallases, Colorados and Detroits had double the payroll that we had, and you’d line up against five Hall of Famers for a faceoff in your own zone. You’ve still got to go out and do it, but the deck is stacked against you a little bit.”

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There was always hope that things would turn out differently in Edmonton back then, but few real expectations. The city’s hockey fans would come alive each spring, the team would upset Dallas one year and Colorado the next, but the magic would wear off in round two, or never materialize at all.

“I look at those teams, we kind of grew up together,” said Marchant. “I started my family there. Edmonton has always had a special place in our hearts. You see the way the city rallies around the team, even though we only won two rounds of playoffs in the late ’90s, but it was electric. People up and down Jasper Ave. and Calgary Trail, honking horns. You go to the grocery store and the person at the checkout is saying good luck tomorrow night. It was a very exciting time to be a part of playoff hockey.”

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Jarret Stoll remembers it the same way. He played 286 regular-season games as an Oiler between 2002 and 2008, and was part of the 2006 team that took Carolina to Game 7 in the final. He went on to win two Cups with the Los Angeles Kings, and those were heady times for him. But he does regret not finishing the job as an Oiler.

“Oh yeah, for sure. I think about that all the time. Doing what we did in ’06, getting so close, and everybody says it, ‘We can get back there.’ But it’s hard. It’s really, really hard. The Oiler fans and the organization and the players, and especially Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, he’s had to realize that for over a decade now.

“It’s not easy and it’s gotten tougher because teams are so good. It’s a lot harder to make the playoffs now than 10 or 15 years ago. Everything has to fall into place.”

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