Oilers-Canucks: You call this a rivalry? Where’s the blood?

Article content

Man. So tight. Almost like a playoff game.

Article content

A mere four points separated the Vancouver Canucks from the second-place Edmonton Oilers before Friday night’s NHL action, with the Albertans having two games in hand. When they meet Saturday at Rogers Place, it will shape the playoffs for both teams.

Article content

The Canucks could put their Pacific Division title hopes in a full nelson with a regulation win, but the Oilers could slip out of that into the driver’s seat with their own regulation win. This should be a full-blown rivalry game — full of hits, sticks, goals and bruises.

But history shows it won’t be.

Vancouver closes out their regular-season slate with a home game against the eliminated Calgary Flames on Tuesday, and in Winnipeg on Thursday against the Jets — who are still locked in a so-tight playoff race of their own in the Central.

Article content

Edmonton hosts Arizona on Friday night, the Canucks on Saturday, and the eliminated San Jose Sharks on Sunday before closing out their schedule with road games in Arizona and Colorado.

The Canucks are still stinging from their loss to the cellar-dwelling ‘Yotes — who bound for Utah but not the playoffs — as they haven’t been able to shake their inconsistent yo-yo form of the past few weeks.

Heading into Friday’s game, Edmonton had won three straight, and only lost once in regulation over the past eight games (6-1-1) — and four of their wins came against playoff-bound teams.

All this adds up to Saturday’s game being one of those crystallizing moments of the season, a nexus of results that anyone can trace future success or failure back to. So you’d think it would be much-anticipation on both sides.

Article content

Article content

But Canucks fans, their Leatherface psyches shredded and reconstituted by years of heartbreak, are projecting their usual angst over the team’s recent dip in form and sudden inability to win games against tough opposition. Yes, the harsh glare of the loss to Arizona has, uhm, eclipsed the win over Vegas.

And while the Oilers should have every reason to be as keen for Saturday as comedian Norm MacDonald was every time OJ. .Simpson was in the news, it was Milquetoast for breakfast as usual.

“You have to look at the big picture. And you can’t get too high, too low,” Oilers coach Kris Knoblauch said Friday morning.

This always seems to be the atmosphere generated by matchups between these two teams. All-time, the only team the Canucks have played more than Edmonton is the Calgary Flames (302-268). So there should be at least some familiarity-derived contempt, right?

Article content

But when we recently mused about who Vancouver’s biggest NHL rivals were — and who the next might be — the Oilers weren’t even honourable mentions in all our social media mentions.

There’s rarely been any bad blood between the two, with maybe Zack Kassian’s dental stickwork on Edmonton’s Sam Gagner in 2013 being the worst. After the Canucks enforcer broke Gagner’s jaw — and left them with matching meth-mouth smiles — he was suspended for five games, and proceeded to mock Gagner’s faceguard the next time they played.

Jake Virtanen and Darnell Nurse did have a long-standing beef because of their YoungStars meeting in Penticton in 2015, when Virtanen trucked both, but that didn’t extend much beyond them.

The year before, then-Oilers coach Dallas Eakins had tried to throw some fuel on the fire by suggesting the Canucks were bigger rivals for Edmonton than Calgary.

Article content

“I know the team down the road (the Flames) is always going to be the rival,” he said. “But for me on the ice, watching the two teams interact, this is the rival now. This is the team where the players clearly dislike each other.”

But that was quickly shot down by Alex (The Dragonslayer) Burrows, who rebutted: “I think rivalries are often developed in the playoffs. I haven’t seen them in the playoffs the last 10 years. I like to call L.A., Chicago, the teams that we have faced more often in the playoffs, as our rivals.

“Maybe geographically, they are,” he added. “A lot of people from Edmonton live in Vancouver and the other way around. There is always a good atmosphere in the building. Here, you see a lot of Canucks jerseys and the same when they come to Rogers Arena, there are a lot of Oilers fans. So that maybe creates a bit of a rivalry, but it’s the playoffs when you play six or seven tough games in a couple of weeks, that is where it really develops.”

Article content

And there, we have two of the important touchstones. Proximity does not manufacture a rivalry alone — example: the Seattle Kraken. It’s playoff history and atmosphere.

The Oilers and Canucks have faced off in the post-season just twice — in 1986 and 1992.

The first time, the Oilers — who finished 60 points ahead of the Canucks — swept them in three games, outscoring them 17-5.

After their 5-1 clincher at the Pacific Coliseum in front of an atmosphere-killing 7,854 fans — a good portion of whom were wearing orange and blue — the Oilers all took a quick, barely-required shower and hit the town to see Wayne Gretzky’s girlfriend, Vikki Moss, sing at Richard’s on Richards.

Article content

The Great One could have kick-started something with a few stinging words after kicking the Canucks’ jocks around, but did something even worse: he showed pity.

“Hopefully this franchise (Vancouver) can turn around,” Gretzky said at the time. “I think (first-year Canucks coach) Tom Watt is a fine coach and he’s heading in the right direction. They’ve got some good young players and they have to work them through the system.”

Gretzky later blamed the Oilers’ exit in the subsequent round on the fact that the first round against Vancouver was so easy, it felt like the playoffs hadn’t started yet, so they weren’t prepared for the Flames.

The next playoff meeting between the Canucks and Oilers was in Pavel Bure’s rookie season. It was a fresh start, the beginning of a new era, with Stan Smyl retiring and Trevor Linden being named captain. Vancouver had just one season where they had won a playoff series in 11 tries before then, and rallied back from a 3-1 deficit against Winnipeg, outscoring the Jets 21-5 in the last three games to make the division final against Edmonton.

Article content

The Canucks fell behind 3-1 in this one, but a 3-0 blanking in Game 6 ignominiously ended their season.

Article content

Only three Canucks were even born the last time the club faced the Oilers in the post-season, though the 30-year-heavy Albertans have six players who were.

While they won’t be first-round opponents, Saturday’s game could be a second-round preview.

Canucks defenceman Quinn Hughes is ready to see the electric atmosphere that comes with playoff hockey after experiencing it as a fan watching his brother Jack play in the post-season with the New Jersey Devils last year.

“It was really cool,” he said. “I went to six games there, three at MSG, and three at Prudential Center. It’s obviously a big time rivalry (with my brother). We wanted to be in the playoffs.”

Forward J.T. Miller remembered how excited Hughes was to watch his brother play live, and knows his teammate wants that same experience.

“That’s all he cares about. … His focus is playing when it matters.”

Well, Saturday matters. And while it’s not a playoff game … man, it’s so tight, it feels like one.

jadams@postmedia.com

Article content