No one had done it before, and no one has done it since - but for three brief years in the 1980s, one man ascended the hockey hierarchy to climb from linesman to NHL team owner.

His name was Harry Ornest, and almost 40 years after he took control of the St. Louis Blues, his story has become a footnote in hockey history.

Fans who do remember him for saving the club from a dispersal draft often think of him as a bull in a china shop who ran the Blues, and later the CFL’s Toronto Argonauts, with a quirky brand of charisma and austerity.

But Ornest's story isn't one of chaos and conflict, although it does include some of that. It's the story of a man who worked 60 years to achieve his childhood dream, one he birthed as a Depression-era son of immigrants growing up on the Canadian prairies. Even having reached an age when many people are tempted to wrap up their life's work and enjoy what they’ve built, Ornest took the biggest gamble of all, putting his modest but self-made fortune on the line to achieve his lifelong vision of success. It's an ambition he saw to completion, even after the stress it caused led to an early heart attack.

For three improbable years, Ornest lived out his childhood dream.

The birth of a dream

Young Harry Ornest was obsessed with sports growing up in Depression-era Edmonton as the son of eastern European Jewish immigrants who ran a local general store.

"Sports was his milieu as a kid," says Laura Ornest, who describes her dad as a "rink rat" who could always be found watching or playing hockey as a child. His naive childhood fantasies bounced between wanting to write about sports, play sports, or own a team. But for Harry, those daydreams rapidly turned into plans.

"It comes from wanting to be somebody," he later wrote in his private notes. "Everybody wants to be somebody. Some never get a chance. Some fall short for whatever reason. Some are prescient enough to pick the right parents. I picked the right parents, but we didn't have a dime. My story is not much different from millions of Depression kids of all racial backgrounds."

Eventually, his entrepreneurial inclinations took over, and team ownership was increasingly his goal, far-fetched as it might have been. To flex his business sense and support the family through the Depression, Ornest sold programs at the outdoor rink. Back then, Edmontonian Clarence Campbell was making headlines as a prominent NHL referee and figured among the local sports stars of the day.

"Being so poor growing up, they didn't have much money. Every dollar mattered. He was learning business from a very young age," Laura Ornest says.

Harry Ornest was a capable athlete; in addition to hockey, he was also a talented baseball player. In 1941, when he was 18 years old, the Seattle Rainiers of the Pacific Coast League invited him to a training camp staged in Southern California. He might have had a longer stint with the team, but an old friend from Edmonton - Harry Black Sr., father of current Colorado Rockies manager Bud Black - was playing hockey for the University of Southern California and invited Ornest to attend a game. When Ornest arrived, he discovered the game was on the verge of cancellation because none of the officials had appeared. Black had Ornest paged over the intercom and pressed him into service as a referee.

His baseball career didn't work out - he slept through his alarm the day after his refereeing stint - but he became interested in pursuing a career as a professional referee.

It wasn't easy to find a job, though. He offered to work for free in the Western Canada Hockey League to gain experience, but that went nowhere. Eventually, he had a chance to referee junior games for $1 a night around Edmonton. But he disallowed a go-ahead goal in a marquee matchup, and that was enough to turn the tide against him. "Ornest is a bum," coaches said, and the league agreed. He was out of a job again.

That prompted Ornest to journey south of the border where he was hired as a linesman in the United States Hockey League; he also worked some games in the American Hockey League. "He had loads of that stuff they call intestinal fortitude," a newspaper clipping he saved reads. The games were rowdy, but that suited Ornest just fine. In one particularly aggressive matchup, a fan hit Ornest on the head with a bottle, which put him in the hospital for two days. But Ornest was undaunted, and by 1948 he graduated into the NHL as a linesman. They called him "the double-barreled court of justice."

"NHL referees and linesmen have the most difficult job in major-league sports, by far," he later wrote in his notes. "Outstanding courage and stamina but faced with a game that has so many borderline judgment decisions."

In one game, he famously strong-armed his way into a fight between Gordie Howe and Maurice Richard; in the same game, he also tripped and skidded along the ice on the seat of his pants.

But the traveling life of a hockey official was not what Ornest envisioned for his future. His goal of team ownership would only become possible if he went into business and raised enough capital. While Ornest was working in the U.S., he discovered an invention that was transforming food sales: vending machines. With assurances from Campbell, who was by then league president, that he could return to officiating if his venture didn't succeed, Ornest took a risk and imported the first vending machines to Western Canada. He then added fountain soda to his offerings, storing the syrupy flavors in his basement before they were distributed to movie theaters and sporting facilities. He began to build a small fortune.

"His family came first, and he was driven to provide for his family and to succeed in the world," Laura says.

Edmonton wasn't big enough for Harry's ambitions. He soon journeyed westward to Vancouver, where there was an opportunity he thought could be life-changing: In 1962, Ornest heard the Vancouver Canucks, then a minor-league team in the Western Hockey League, were to be sold in a blind bid. Anticipating they would soon join the NHL, Ornest placed a bid. However, the team was awarded to former Vancouver mayor Fred Hume. Ornest believed Hume had been tipped off to Ornest’s higher bid and was able to increase his offer, but he couldn't prove it.

"He was angry and it was a huge disappointment," Laura says.

The Canucks did join the NHL in 1970, but Harry had already moved on - he packed up the family and went south to Los Angeles.

"I had to keep trying; you don't give up," Harry later told Laura. He likened his career to a baseball player's batting average: Successfully getting a hit one-third of the time was considered elite. He was playing the long game.

That internal wisdom propelled him for nearly two decades as he futilely tried to purchase a team. "He didn't have the money, but he had the vision," Laura says.

In a world before search engines, Harry would typically have no fewer than three newspapers delivered to his front steps each morning. He scoured their pages for hints a team might be changing owners, enlisting his four children to snip articles while he packaged annotated clippings before mailing them to decision-makers. If he wasn't doing that, he was on the phone calling business partners, journalists, and friends - trading information and trying against all odds to push his dream into existence.

Ornest's business focus expanded to producing teenage fairs in Toronto and Vancouver, but money became tight, and he eventually had to borrow from his brother to stay afloat. He reached a personal low when he applied for a job at the Los Angeles Forum.

"A true defeat," Laura says. "He had never worked for anyone. He carved his life out as an entrepreneur." Adding insult to injury, he didn't get the job. He later convinced Vancouver businessman Peter Graham to lease out the San Diego Sports Arena, which Harry operated. It was a step in the right direction, but it came with a lot of stress, and Ornest suffered a heart attack at the age of 48.

In 1977, his obsessive networking paid off when a call came in from former MLB player and manager Bobby Bragan.

"Harry, the Pacific Coast League is expanding by two teams. Do you want in?" Bragan asked in his Alabama drawl.

Ornest purchased the new Vancouver Triple-A franchise for $25,000 and helped his brother Leo purchase the Portland expansion team. (Leo Ornest would later win a Stanley Cup as vice president of the Calgary Flames.)

The major leagues - in any sport - were Harry's ultimate dream, but he was on the ladder now.

"The Ornest family owns the Canadians 100 percent," he wrote privately. It was a source of pride.

He shrewdly named the team the Canadians, using the alternating red and blue lettering from Molson's branding. The beer company paid him $75,000, according to his notes. At the time, it was prohibited for an alcohol company to purchase the naming rights to a team, so Ornest classified the deal as a promotion.

"Out of the fertile promoter's mind of Harry Ornest," a clipping he saved reads, "a baseball team has sprung into semi-full bloom." He set to work renovating Nat Bailey Stadium - spending $500,000 to modernize what he called "a pigeon's delight," as the facility had fallen into disrepair at the time of purchase. There were disgruntled neighbors and bylaw battles with the city, but within three years, the team was successful enough to attract the notice of Vancouver businessman Nelson Skalbania - the man who later signed a 17-year-old Wayne Gretzky to the Indianapolis Racers of the World Hockey Association. Ornest sold the team to Skalbania for $3 million in 1980.

"He really didn't have to do anything more after that and he would have been comfortable," Laura says. "But he was obsessed. He had this dream. He was always looking for more." He finally had enough money to make that happen.

The big leagues

Harry returned to California and, as was his custom, continued scouring the newspapers for a team to purchase.

"There was nobody who read the business section or the sports section of major papers in the U.S. and Canada like Harry," says Jim Devellano, the former Islanders and Red Wings general manager. "He would scribble notes in the margins like, 'This is a bunch of baloney,' or, 'Look at this, Jimmy. This would work.' I've still got the mammoth file. But at the end of the day, it wasn't a hobby for him. It was business."

Ornest didn't have to wait long before his strategy was rewarded. It was merely, as he called it, a "little squib" in the Los Angeles Times, but the January 1983 headline immediately raised Ornest's hopes.

"Hockey is Dead in St. Louis," it read.

"Suddenly, I got real interested," he later told L.A. Times sports editor Bill Dwyre. The story detailed the sordid state of professional hockey in the Gateway City: The Blues, then owned by local pet food company Ralston Purina, were to be sold to a group of investors in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

Ornest expressed his incredulity with a phrase that people familiar with his story love to repeat: "We used to call Saskatoon 'Saskabush!'" He had a firm conviction that NHL hockey could not survive in Saskatoon. At the time, its population was only about 150,000, roughly a third the size of St. Louis.

The Blues were no strangers to life-or-death circumstances; they'd flirted with disaster six years earlier. "At that time, they were the model franchise and got a lot of teams upset with them because of how much money they sunk into players," says Andy Mohler, senior sports producer at KSDK, the NBC affiliate in St. Louis. Then, the Blues were owned by insurance tycoon Sid Salomon and his son. "They treated the players to deals with a local car dealership - they all got personalized (Plymouth) Barracudas. They owned a boutique hotel that they would bring the players and families to, all expenses paid. They deferred contracts. It all came back to bite them."

The Salomons were desperate to part with the team, but no one in St. Louis made an offer. That's when Ralston Purina, out of a sense of civic duty, purchased the Blues in 1977.

The pet food company didn't have better luck running the team; the Blues' pre-tax losses averaged about $3 million a year from 1977 to 1983. Hockey as a whole was a tough business to be in at the time - 14 of the 21 NHL teams were not profitable. By 1983, Ralston Purina was just as desperate as the Salomons to rid themselves of the Blues. "They decided that civic responsibility was not their priority anymore," Mohler says.

That's when the investment group from Saskatoon, led by Bill Hunter, stepped forward with a $11.5-million cash offer to move the Blues to the so-called Paris of the Prairies.

"Of course, the city went into a sort of panic," Mohler says. The NHL blocked the sale and Purina served the league with a $60-million lawsuit while terminating over half of the team's employees.

​​"They basically threatened that, if this doesn't get taken care of, or you're not allowing us to sell to Bill Hunter, then we're just going to basically dry-dock the franchise, leave it at your doorstep, and be done with it.

"There were only three or four people still left in the building, one of which was longtime defenseman Bob Plager - who told me that he and a couple of assistants and the trainer would spend each day sitting in the bowels of the arena telling old stories and hoping that something was going to get resolved," Mohler says.

Making good on their word, the Blues refused to attend the 1983 NHL entry draft. "I sat at that draft at the head of the table with Detroit," Devellano says. "There was an empty table with the insignia of the St. Louis Blues."

The Blues were on the brink of extinction and the NHL had already created plans for a dispersal draft of their players, which included the likes of Bernie Federko, Garry Unger, and Brian Sutter.

Enter Harry Ornest.

"He was a really tough negotiator," Devellano says. That skill was necessary for Ornest to put the finishing touches on a deal that would culminate in the achievement of his life's greatest dream. Just hours before the NHL's deadline, Ornest reached an agreement, purchasing the team and earning himself a place in the big leagues for the first time in his life at the age of 60.

The Blues sold for $3 million in cash and $9 million in unsecured notes, which didn't require interest payments until the Blues reached a certain level of profitability. Local investors put up an additional $3 million in operating capital. Ornest got 64% ownership of the team and 100% of the 17,650-seat arena he once officiated in.

"How can I describe it? It was a dream," Laura Ornest says. "This wasn't a wealthy man who was able to pursue it to make it his hobby. There was so much uncertainty, and it was stressful. But for us as a family - it was a dream come true."

The Ornest era

Harry Ornest had achieved his dream. Maintaining it was the next challenge.

"At that point, Harry was the white knight riding into town. He was a hero because there was no entity from St. Louis that was willing to take the Blues on. They had fallen on hard times," Mohler says.

Forty years later, it remains undeniable that Ornest kept the Blues from oblivion. "He was truly viewed initially as the savior of the team," former longtime Blues PR executive Susie Mathieu says. And his charisma and larger-than-life personality put hockey on the map. "He made it a lively atmosphere wherever you went, and quite honestly at that time, hockey in the United States wasn't what it has been elevated to. He could surely garner attention, press, and fan interest," she says.

"Face to face, he was a very nice man," Mohler says. "If a Girl Scout troop would call him up and ask him to come speak to them, he would. He would even miss part of a game if they wanted him to speak on a game night."

And Ornest could sell himself. "He literally would call any writer, any sportscaster, and state his opinions, and then he would send them clips," Mathieu says. "It was actually funny."

Ornest leveraged his Depression-era business sense to shift the team's financial fortunes. "If you start losing a couple of million a year on a hockey team, you get drained pretty quickly," Devellano says. "He told me, 'Jimmy, I have to be careful with St. Louis.' To his credit, he didn't get drained. He made it work. Whatever it cost him to run the Blues, he made sure that amount of revenue came in."

Ornest moved three of his adult children and his wife to St. Louis to run the team together - a family enterprise had always been central to his dream. He abruptly cut the $4.5-million payroll by $1 million and raised the average ticket price 10% to $11, dropping the Blues' break-even to 13,500 tickets sold per game. He also focused on building luxury suites, increasing TV revenue, and making the arena profitable by filling its calendar with events.

He also made some deft hockey moves, recruiting a relatively unknown Jacques Demers to coach and bringing in Montreal Canadiens legend Ron Caron as his general manager and Jack Quinn as team president.

"The romantic side of this story is how first, he saved the team. The league was gonna scrap it. They don't even (attend) the draft. Then he gets these two terrific guys - Caron, a savvy GM, and Jacques Demers as a coach, and they stay competitive," hockey historian Stan Fischler says. Indeed, by 1985-86, the Blues had turned around their on-ice fortunes. Their postseason was a memorable affair - they came within one goal of reaching the Stanley Cup Final. A stunning third-period comeback from a 5-2 deficit in Game 6 of the conference final against Calgary was dubbed the "Monday Night Miracle." But Calgary won Game 7 at home to advance to play Montreal for the Cup.

And St. Louis' honeymoon period didn't last. Ornest's personality had a dark side, and St. Louis was about to get a blast of it. "There were a lot of positives to Harry," Mathieu says. "There were also a lot of negatives on the other end of it. Chaotic is probably a good word."

As smart and charming as Ornest could be, he was also hotheaded, stubborn, and, at times, severe.

"I didn't see much of that dark side because he and I were buddies," Fischler says. "That is, until it came to the crisis over the book." Many years after the St. Louis saga, Ornest hired Fischler to write his autobiography. The project was killed after a dispute about the opening chapter, which featured a well-documented scuffle between Ornest and actor John Forsythe that occurred during a Hollywood Park Racetrack board meeting.

"He didn't become abusive, but something close to it," Fischler says. "It would have been a hell of a book."

That tempestuous nature - verging on insulting at times - was also part of Ornest's approach to the league, his staff, the city, and even the construction contractors upgrading the arena.

"I would be in these league meetings, and he'd be giving people shit," Devellano says. "Including the president of the league. He didn't make friends. He'd derail league meetings talking about the kind of money the NHL was wasting. He was a pariah in that regard. He was not popular. He couldn't afford to play with the big boys, and he knew that, so he would confront other owners and go, 'Why are you paying all of this money to this coach? Why do you pay the players all that money?' Then he'd be mad at the commissioner of the league: 'Why do you have such a big staff? I operate the St. Louis Blues with five people! Why do you have 25 people running the league?' None of the other owners talked that way."

Among the 20 other owners at the time, Ornest might have only had one true ally. "Harry's biggest pal was John McMullen, the owner of the Devils," Fischler says. "They were the two black sheep owners in the league. They weren't afraid to speak out. They didn't take any shit."

There were other missteps, too. Ornest's dream had been for the family to run the team together, but fans weren't always thrilled about their contributions. In particular, Ornest's wife, Ruth, redesigned their jerseys, a move that rankled the fan base. Harry was also maligned for trading fan favorite Joe Mullen to Calgary at the 1986 trade deadline. He insisted it was a hockey decision, but he was branded a cheapskate for not wanting to shell out the contract increase Mullen sought.

Then there is the oft-repeated story of the nonexistent team charter airplane. The true details of the event are lost to time. As the anecdote goes, after losing the conference final to Calgary, the team's charter back to St. Louis was canceled. "I don't know whether the charter was canceled because Harry was too cheap or if it was an issue with the airlines. It remains one of those mysteries that's never answered correctly," Mathieu says.

What is true is that Mathieu purchased commercial flights for the team's return trip to St. Louis. "I stayed up all night and was working to get everyone back commercially," she says. "I maxed out my credit card, and I went to Bernie Federko and Brian Sutter, who were the leaders of the team, and they let me use theirs." Everyone was eventually reimbursed for the flights.

Rumors about Ornest swirled. At some point, he had bragged about having the best coach in the league at the cheapest price. That might have been true - but it exposed a weakness ripe for exploitation. Making matters worse for Ornest, Demers didn't have a written contract extension in place, merely a handshake agreement.

That's when Devellano swooped in. "I stole Jacques Demers from St. Louis," he says. "I actually got caught tampering." His punishment from the NHL amounted to a slap on the wrist.

Ornest's reputation began to alienate key figures in St. Louis - most importantly Mayor Vincent Schoemehl. After a dispute over the city's amusement tax, which Ornest alleged was unfairly levied against the Blues and not the Cardinals, the city claimed eminent domain over the arena in 1986, professing that it needed the land for a municipal infrastructure project. The arena had been the main source of revenue for Ornest, offsetting the cost of the team. After a back-and-forth battle, Ornest conceded, agreeing to sell the team to an investment group headed by local businessman Mike Shanahan for $19 million and the arena to the city of St. Louis for $15 million. The city ultimately backed away from its plans to demolish the arena, and the Blues remained there until the team's current arena opened in 1994.

"It was sad," Laura Ornest says. "He loved owning that team. Loved it."

While Harry Ornest was romantic about sports, he was also a pragmatist. "He didn't have the financial wherewithal to compete at that level," Devellano says. "Harry was far from stupid. He wasn't going to risk the family's savings putting it all into a hockey team and going broke."

"I liked to tell people in St. Louis, after I bought the team, that I was a child of the Depression," Ornest once said to Dwyre. "I also liked to tell them that I had never really known poverty until I bought the Blues."

After selling the team, Ornest moved his family back to Los Angeles, but soon he was scouring the papers again for another shot at his dream. In 1988, he purchased the Toronto Argonauts, selling them in 1991 to Bruce McNall, John Candy, and Gretzky. He later purchased shares in Hollywood Park Racetrack with the aim of building a stadium on its property. Ornest died in 1998 at the age of 75, but that's the site where SoFi Stadium now stands.

"I considered him one of these fascinating curmudgeons in sports," Fischler says.

Ornest might have been an outsider who did things on a shoestring budget and let his passion get the best of him, but he did accomplish his lifelong goal. "He was an ordinary guy from Edmonton, Alberta, who wanted to live the American sports dream," Devellano says. "And God bless him, he made it."

Jolene Latimer is a features writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2024 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

Editor's note: Jessica Campbell on Wednesday was hired to join Dan Bylsma's staff as an assistant coach with the Seattle Kraken, becoming the first full-time female bench coach in NHL history. Our story on her journey through the game was first published in November 2023 when she was on Bylsma's staff with Coachella Valley in the AHL.

"When she was small we lived miles from town - on a farm - and she would say, 'Can we go skating tonight?' and it'd be a blizzard," Campbell's mom Monique says. "You could not keep her off the ice. She had so much fun skating with people. She would beg for me to drive her in even though you could barely see the road. That's how much she loved it, she just couldn't miss a night."

Loving hockey was a birthright for the Campbells. As a young adult, Monique played hockey at the University of Saskatchewan, while Jessica's dad, Gary, grew up on outdoor rinks of Canadian lore.

"It's something I grew up with, my dad liking hockey so much," Monique says. "He passed it on in outdoor rinks and small rural teams we got to play on as girls. I got the opportunity (to play) from my dad and my husband got the opportunity from his family. So we just kept that going."

The four Campbell children followed their parents into a lifelong love affair with the game. Josh, the oldest, had big-league ambitions. By the time he was 17, he was up to nearly a point a game for his AAA team. Next in line was Dion, who played university hockey in New Brunswick before professional stints in the Central Hockey League and in Germany. Jessica's older sister, Gina, followed in her mother's footsteps to play university hockey at the University of Regina.

But back in the fall of 2002, when Jessica was 10, the family's passion for hockey led them to relocate to Melville, Saskatchewan, from nearby Rocanville to be closer to Josh, who signed as a rookie with the Yorkton Terriers of the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League.

"I want to be a fan favorite here. I don't just want to be an average hockey player, I want to be one of the best, the best I can be," Josh said at a press event at the time.

By Canadian Thanksgiving in October, the younger kids were settling into their new schools. Josh, who turned 18 in September, would be heading home for the holiday.

But at 8 a.m. on the Friday of the long weekend, Monique received devastating news: Josh had been in a fatal collision. He wasn't coming home.

"I remember that morning very clearly. It's just a heartbreaking, devastating moment. You feel weak and lost," Monique says.

Josh had been Jessica's biggest role model. "She always connected with him because that's who we watched play hockey the most," Monique says. "She looked up to him a lot. He always helped her along the way, giving her tips on the ice, strategy. We went shinnying together and played a lot together. There was a really good bond there."

The pain pierced through Jessica's childhood. "Those were hard times on me as a young girl," Campbell says. The family leaned into what it knew best: hockey. "It was just a challenging time, but I think it only made us stronger," she says. "And, honestly, it made hockey a place for us where we could work through it. The game itself brought so much joy. I think the game of hockey is an amazing sport because there's a community of people. When you're from small towns, that rink, and the arena, it's a place of gathering where people have each other's backs and everyone knows each other."

That community sustained the family through the darkest days following Josh's death. "A lot of Josh's friends at the time on the Terriers - his teammates - would come out and watch (Jessica) play. I know that meant a lot to her," Monique says. "The hockey community - it is like a family, really. They seem to know what you're going through and are really compassionate."

As the family adjusted to its loss, hockey helped 10-year-old Jessica define her identity. "The avenue of sport and hockey for me was a place where we healed together as a family but we also could carry on my brother's love for the game," she says.

Even before Josh's death, Campbell had announced herself on the ice.

"I remember I was coaching novice hockey," family friend Leo Parker says. "We lose to this little novice team. House league teams. We lose, I don't know, 10-2 or something like that. Jess scored all 10 goals."

Parker paused to laugh. "My son Andre said to me, 'Dad, we have to get her on our team.' She was a perfect little hockey player."

Following Josh's death, Parker says Campbell always insisted on wearing his No. 8.

"You can always connect dots back in your life. Right?" Campbell says. "For me, that loss at such a young age and not really understanding why - you never understand why - that was always the driving force for me in my playing career."

Her goals crystallized in those years: get to the highest level of hockey. As a young woman in the early 2000s, that meant making the Canadian national team. And she had a skill that gave her an edge: skating.

"Jess was always, by far, the best skater on our team," says Bailey Bram, who represented Canada at the 2018 Winter Olympics. "When it came to power skating drills, she was always the one who the coach was like, 'OK, Jess, you demo because you can do it best.' No one would ever race her to anything because it was just like, 'Jess is automatically going to win.'"

Campbell earned a silver medal at the world under-18 championship and gold the following year as team captain before playing four years of hockey at Cornell. After being cut three times in the final round of tryouts for the senior national team, Campbell was eventually named to the team in 2014, on Oct. 11 - exactly 12 years to the day of Josh's death.

"She called me the minute she found out. She was just sobbing," Bram says. "She was just like, 'This is supposed to happen this way. And it was supposed to happen this weekend.'"

That same year, Campbell signed with the Calgary Inferno in the Canadian Women's Hockey League, playing with them for three seasons. As her playing career began winding down, it was time for her to ask: what next?

The answer was obvious to the people who knew Campbell best.

From her mom's perspective, it was natural Campbell would continue to leverage her high energy and love for people. "Jess was a high-spirited child who liked to do everything. She never missed anything. She wanted to be part of a lot of things," Monique says. Campbell loved hockey's team atmosphere; even when she was regularly the only girl on her minor hockey team, her mom noticed she formed instant, close bonds with all her teammates on road trips, at tournaments, and on the ice. Her mom couldn't imagine her doing anything but being involved with a team.

To Bram, skating definitely had to be part of Campbell's future. "We all thought she might end up doing something with hockey and skating because that's what she was so good at."

Putting those two together meant Campbell would be a natural fit to coach, so she took a position in the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia coaching high school girls. Several years into her tenure, she called Bram from a Starbucks drive-through for an impromptu heart-to-heart.

"She said, 'I'm not unhappy here. I just feel like I'm not fulfilled. I love the girls. They're fun. But, I just feel I have more potential,'" Bram remembers.

"I wanted to continue to aspire to work with players of the highest level, regardless of gender," Campbell says.

To aim for the highest levels of professional coaching meant she would have to do something that hadn't yet been done by a woman: rise through the ranks of men's professional hockey and into the NHL.

"There is no true blueprint for anybody's pathway," Campbell, 31, says. "If you would have looked at mine, you probably would never have said, 'She's going to coach in the NHL or be in this position.' Because the reality was, nobody else was doing it. But looking back now, I feel if I connect my dots backwards, my upbringing and my story as a young girl with the boys has set me up for the right mentality," she says.

Campbell headed directly from the drive-through to her employer to give notice she was leaving. She had a plan: to launch her own power skating business. And that business took off.

Campbell briefly relocated to Sweden to launch JC Powerskating before returning to the Okanagan shortly before the NHL's 2020 playoff bubble was set to begin. At the time, many players were isolating in the Okanagan and looking for summer ice to brush off pandemic cobwebs, and before long, she was running 20-person skates with players like Luke Schenn - who won the Stanley Cup with the Tampa Bay Lightning that year.

"I wasn't focused on trying to get to work with NHL players," Campbell says. "I was presented with an opportunity where one NHL player wanted ice time and asked if they could come skate with me. Next thing you know, there were 15 guys and I was running an entire NHL group. The realization for me was just to continue to bring that passion and not worry about any of the other barriers or perspectives that others may have about it."

After noticing her skates gaining momentum with NHLers, Brent Seabrook hired Campbell privately to help him recover from hip and shoulder surgery.

"I really hated her, to be honest," Seabrook says laughing. He clarifies: "I hated watching her skate.

"I'll never forget, we were working on pivots. And she's like, 'Hey, I want you to come up. And I want you to do like this.'"

Campbell demonstrated the skill and Seabrook shook his head.

"I'm like, 'Jess, there's no chance I'm going to be able to get that low and get my leg out that far. And then push and pump. It doesn't matter how healthy I am or how young I ever was. There's no way I can get down that low,'" he says. "She was very good with the technical parts of it."

Her sheer skill earned her respect. "Everything she was asking us to do, she could do," he says. "Everything. She did it, and she did it really well.

"I find the people that I've worked with (who) are really exceptional at what they do are the people that really stop you and correct you and make sure you're doing it properly."

But it wasn't only Campbell's skating that Seabrook liked; her demeanor was great, too. "She took the time to talk to us. It wasn't barking. I could talk to her. She'd follow up with questions. She was learning from us as well. She didn't take any crap from us. She was out there to do a job, and the mentality was, 'Let's do it properly.'

"Whatever level you're at, you want to feel like (your coaches) care," Seabrook says. "She would go the extra mile. She would text me after to see how I was feeling. Is it too much? What do you want to do tomorrow for the skate? Do you think we should go harder? Should we pull back a bit? There was a plan behind every skate. She cared."

That's Campbell's personality - on and off the ice. "That's a big piece of who I am as a coach," she says. "I want to be a coach who is willing to ask the hard questions and who is willing to be sensitive. I know that is my feminine self that comes through in coaching. It is that communication piece. That level of care. Making sure the guys know my coaching style is to lead with love and lead with service for them. Making sure they know I'm in the trenches with them, and all I want to do is see them succeed."

Opportunity knocked as her coaching reputation grew. In 2021, she headed to Germany to be an assistant coach of the Nuremberg Ice Tigers in the DEL under ​​Tom Rowe, the former Florida Panthers general manager and head coach. After the season, she and Rowe were assistants to Toni Soderholm with the German national team at the men's world championship.

That's where Campbell came to the attention of Dan Bylsma, the 2011 NHL coach of the year and winner of the 2009 Stanley Cup with the Pittsburgh Penguins. When Bylsma met Campbell, he was an assistant coach with Team USA, and was also scouting upcoming additions for his staff, as he was set to start as head coach of the Seattle Kraken's AHL affiliate, the newly formed Coachella Valley Firebirds.

"I started my search with a couple of different names in mind. But I saw her coaching the German national team and I started an investigation into where Jessica was at and where her coaching path was at," Bylsma says.

He was even more impressed when he learned about her skates in the Okanagan. "NHL players reached out to her and asked her to put them on the ice and through the paces to keep their game fresh and relevant," he says. "That struck a big chord with me in terms of what kind of coach she is. She can put a player on a path to be relevant."

When Bylsma hired her, she became the first woman to have a full-time coaching position in the AHL. Now in her second season on Bylsma's staff and with an NHL preseason game under her belt, she's close to the pinnacle she sought when she left her high school job.

"I think that my hardships and the challenging times in my life were actually the days that prepared me for the work in this job," Campbell says. "There are a lot of hard days, there are a lot of sleepless nights. And, I am alone in this space. As much as I feel completely supported by my staff, by Bylsma, by the organization, by the Kraken - everybody has been so supportive of me - there isn't another female coach specifically in my position that I can call at the end of the day and just communicate with on that same level.

"I think the strength comes from some of the challenging times in my life where I can lean in. I can dig in and access the place of strength."

Campbell's in charge of the Firebirds' forwards and power-play unit. In her first season, Coachella Valley was the AHL's third-highest scoring team, with 257 goals. The power play hummed at 20.3% efficiency. The club marched to the Calder Cup final, eventually losing to the Hershey Bears in seven games.

Along the way, Campbell did exactly what Bylsma thought she would: show players how to become relevant. She helped transform forward Tye Kartye's play and jumpstart his NHL prospects. Kartye, an undrafted free agent, led AHL rookies with 57 points in 2022-23 and was named the league's top freshman. He was called up to the Kraken for the 2023 NHL playoffs.

Kartye's experience was similar to the one Seabrook had back in Campbell's early Okanagan days. "She was really good at telling you how the game went and what you needed to improve on," Kartye says. "Little conversations like that, when you talk one-on-one about how you're doing and how you can improve and how the games have been going, conversations like that build a lot of trust."

It's an approach that proves itself in the details and the staggering amount of hours she devotes to developing players.

"Last year, I was a rookie. I came in and it was a bit of a slow start," Kartye says. "Being able to work with her after practice - she was always out on the ice before or after practice - whenever I needed to do something, she was always there. She'd pass pucks, give advice, go over video. She helped me an incredible amount as I was trying to reach my goal to get to the NHL."

Campbell traces that dedication back to her brother. "That mindset of really not holding back and just going for it has always been inspired by my brother and the way he lived and in the athlete and person that he was," she says.

That work ethic and people-centered approach keep providing her chances to see her brother's dream come to fruition. "I think every day about how I get to live out my brother's dream of working or playing at the highest level on the men's side. I do feel a sense of pride and honor with my family that they get to also experience this with me, and there's just so much joy around the game. The game has always been a place where we, as a family, have been able to connect and celebrate."

If Campbell could say one thing to Josh, knowing what she now does about her career path, and her future dreams, she knows what those words would be: "I'm here because of you. And I definitely am grateful every day. I'm never going to take the opportunity for granted to get to do what I love on the ice."

And if Josh could see Jessica now, Monique thinks he'd use her nickname, one he gave his little sister because she ran before she could walk. She thinks he'd say something like this:

"Boof, we always knew you were going to go far with hockey. Look what you've done. I'm extremely proud."

Jolene Latimer is a feature writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2024 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

Jack Michaels knows what sets his play-by-play apart from other qualified broadcasters in sports radio.

"I feel like I have a certain understanding of when a big moment is coming," the Edmonton Oilers play-by-play announcer said. It's a feel he picked up from watching horse racing as a kid.

Like horse racing, Michaels believes a good hockey game is all about a slow build that grows to a crescendo. That crescendo has been swelling throughout the Stanley Cup Final this year, as the Oilers have mounted a historic comeback from a 3-0 series deficit to force a Game 7 on Monday night.

After the Oilers' Game 6 victory Friday, Michaels called Game 7 the biggest game in Stanley Cup history. Only once in major North American sports history has a team recovered from a 3-0 deficit to win the championship (the 1942 Toronto Maple Leafs).

Michaels and color commentator Bob Stauffer will be doing their call on 630 CHED - boosted by SiriusXM and various internet apps - for fans connecting via the broadcast medium that's been linking communities for almost as long as the NHL itself. And they'll be ready to meet the moment.

When Michaels calls a game, he thinks about all the people who are relying on him to be their eyes. "What you're trying to do is bring the person who can't afford tickets, can't afford to travel, they have a night shift or couldn't make the game or whatever reason - you're basically trying to take everyone who can't make the game and put them in the game, and put them beside you as if you're watching it together. You want to give the idea that this is somewhere I'd love to be, and if I can't be there, at least I'm with someone who can, who I can chat with," he said.

When Michaels thinks about hockey in his childhood growing up north of Pittsburgh, his memories are punctuated by the voice of Penguins play-by-play announcer Mike Lange.

"He was considered one of the absolute greats of the game," said Michaels, who'd listen to the Hall of Fame announcer detail the exploits of Penguin greats like Mario Lemieux and Jaromir Jagr in their prime.

"He set a standard in terms of being among the greatest voices ever to call it. I had a sense for how exciting and fast-paced and thrilling hockey could be."

Michaels eventually followed Lange into broadcasting, first in Colorado Springs as an announcer for the WCHL's Gold Kings. After an eight-year stint in Anchorage doing play-by-play for the Alaska Aces in the ECHL, he graduated to the NHL in 2010, becoming the play-by-play announcer for the Oilers. He calls games for both television and radio, but it's the latter for which fans love him most.

"You almost get a more accurate picture of what's going on through his description than you do actually watching the game," said Krysty Kline, an Oilers fan who listens to the radio calls from Orange County, California.

Despite the bombardment of streaming services, broadcasts, podcasts and social media available today, a sizable number of fans will still tune in to the radio to hear Michaels. Because somehow, remarkably, radio still matters.

Especially to Oilers fans.

A 2-way conversation

If ever there were a man who knew the power of radio in Edmonton, it's Bob Stauffer, who hosts "Oilers Now" on 630 CHED in addition to doing color commentary on the broadcasts.

He believes talk radio continues to find engaged listeners in Edmonton because of the deep affection for the iconic Oilers brand. "People are passionate, and people know the game," he said. "They're looking for sources of information, and then you can engage in a longer form of conversation on talk radio."

Unlike podcasts, radio shows are live, and listeners can call or text to communicate directly with the host. Many shows, like Stauffer's, also field calls from fans. Essentially a real-time version of online comment sections, with the hosts ready to respond. "There are people that are hardcore radio listeners, they do value opinion," Stauffer said. "They don't mind listening to others getting different perspectives as well."

That's one reason Kline listens to Stauffer's shows from 1,700 miles away, where she moved almost 17 years ago. Each afternoon, she puts her three girls - two toddlers and a newborn - down for a nap, tosses on her headphones, and tunes in to hear what Stauffer has to say about the Oilers. She uses the TuneIn app to find the station over the internet.

"They have an in-depth look at the players," said Kline. "And when listeners call in, it adds value."

Kline says the Oilers coverage on 630 CHED goes beyond the nuts and bolts of hockey to give her what she's really looking for – the story. "It's the drama," she said. "Who's out? What's going on? Who sucks? Who doesn't? Who's this beautiful rising-from-the-ashes story? You follow along more passionately that way, and that's what those local shows do well. They share those stories."

Tom Gazzola believes so much in the power of radio's connection that he was part of a group that started Edmonton Sports Talk as an internet station after the abrupt shutdown of Bell Media's TSN 1260 in 2023.

"Radio is there for you. People get to know the hosts, and they feel that they know them. It's not a quick two- or three-minute segment on the TV where you see somebody for a few minutes, and then they're gone for the rest of the broadcast. On radio shows, they're there for you and with you for a couple of hours. You can text in, you can call and actually interact with them. I think there's a certain level of comfort there and some accessibility. At the end of the day, we're just there to give people something to chew on while they grind through their days."

Part of their lives

The Michaels-Stauffer duo is set to become part of the lives of some Edmontonians in a big way Monday night when they call what could be the most historic Stanley Cup Final in living memory - one that could return the Cup to Canada for the first time in 30 years and end Edmonton's Cup drought that has persisted since 1990.

Michaels hasn't quite adjusted to the idea that he's someone's Mike Lange in an era when Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl are the star attractions. But when he does take time to think of his role, he just hopes the radio broadcast pierces through the distractions to make people feel something.

"I hope people listening to it will have an emotion one way or another rather than just immediately forget it," he said. "I would like to think of certain games that people listen to me call as ones to be remembered. And hopefully it's a memory of driving in the car with their son or daughter or driving back from a trip out to the lake or something that they've shared with somebody. I'd like to be a small piece of that."

For Michaels, it's the shared experience that's the coolest. "It's not about making the perfect call or anything like that. It's just being a little part of their lives," he added. "Hopefully a pleasant part."

Jolene Latimer is a features writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2024 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

Much was expected of Reggie Leach in 1976 when the Flyers entered the playoffs in search of their third consecutive Stanley Cup title. After leading the NHL during the regular season with 61 goals, his offensive firepower was crucial if the Broad Street Bullies were to add more hardware to their trophy case.

Leach understood the assignment. Through the first two rounds, he scored 15 goals in 12 games, including an astonishing five-goal performance against Boston, to tie Yvan Cournoyer's record set in 17 contests in 1973. The Cup chase was only three rounds then, so the Flyers would face Montreal in the final.

"It was just one of those years for myself that everything I shot went in," he said. "I felt like I was unstoppable at that time. It's all your confidence when you go into a game. That year was just unbelievable for myself."

But his heroics weren't enough: The Flyers were swept by the Canadiens. Leach added four goals to his total, though, establishing the record of 19 he still shares with Edmonton's Jari Kurri. Leach's exquisite effort might have been shuffled to the back pages of the record book if it wasn't for the stamp of permanence that came after the Canadiens lifted the Cup.

Leach was awarded the Conn Smythe Trophy for the most valuable player during the playoffs, the only time in NHL history that a skater from the losing team has received the trophy. Goalies from losing teams had won it before: Detroit's Roger Crozier in 1966 and Glenn Hall in 1968 with the Blues. Two more came after Leach: Ron Hextall in 1987 with the Flyers and Jean-Sebastien Giguere in 2003 with the Ducks.

"At the time, it wasn't a real big deal because of us losing to Montreal," Leach said. "With hockey, it's a team sport. When you lose, you lose together. But, after you retire, you look at stuff and you say, 'Oh my God, I did this, I did that.' That was the biggest thing after I retired."

History of the Conn Smythe Trophy

In the NHL's early years, there was one award to win - the Stanley Cup itself. But new accolades were added to the trophy case over time. In 1925, the Lady Byng Trophy was donated by its namesake to recognize the player who best exemplified good sportsmanship. In 1927, the Vezina Trophy was first awarded to the league's top goaltender. The Art Ross Trophy was first given to the regular season points leader in 1948. But, until the Conn Smythe's introduction in 1965, no honor existed to celebrate the playoffs' standout performer.

"They started awarding the Conn Smythe Trophy in 1965 and the reason would be because there was no award for the top player in the playoffs like there was in other sports," said hockey historian Paul Patskou. Named after the longtime Maple Leafs owner, general manager and head coach who donated the prize, the trophy was fittingly designed as a replica of Maple Leaf Gardens, then home to Toronto's team.

"The first winner was Jean Beliveau of Montreal in 1965. Of course, there was a big rivalry between Montreal and Toronto back then and it was kind of ironic that Beliveau would win something with a replica of the Leafs arena. But Beliveau was all class. That didn't bother him," Patskou says.

What did trouble some was the original voting process, which the papers at the time decried as "a farce." Voting was performed by the governors of the NHL's six teams, but the papers at the time claimed at least three of the governors did not attend even one game in the final series, instead appointing executives to vote in their place. Voting has since been left to the Professional Hockey Writers Association.

The Conn Smythe Trophy has been given to all positions - goalies, defensemen and offensive superstars. In its third year, it finally made its first appearance in Maple Leaf Gardens when forward Dave Keon won it in the Leafs' most recent Stanley Cup championship. "He didn't score a lot of points. But he did everything else," Patskou said. "And, for the first time, they didn't announce it that night. They announced the results the day after."

Sometimes the award has gone to veterans, other times to rookies. "An interesting one was in 1971 when Ken Dryden won it when he was still a rookie. He'd only played six regular-season games and he won the Conn Smythe before he even became a regular player," Patskou said. Dryden, in fact, won the Calder Trophy as rookie of the year in 1972.

But only once has it gone to the skater of a losing team. That might all change in the 2024 playoffs.

Could history repeat itself?

"The last two games, (Connor) McDavid was just unbelievable," said Leach, who thinks the Oilers captain will help push the series to a Game 7. "When I played, we didn't have all the fancy stickhandling and all that stuff - it was mainly a pass-and-shoot game. It's unbelievable is what it is. He's really determined to win the Cup."

In his quest to bring the Cup back to Canada for the first time in 30 years, McDavid leads all scorers with eight goals and 34 assists, totaling 42 points in 23 postseason games. He's collected eight of those points in the last two games as the Oilers faced elimination; he's the first player in NHL history to record consecutive four-point games in a Stanley Cup Final. He's 10 points ahead of teammate Leon Draisaitl in the scoring race and 20 points ahead of Matthew Tkachuk, the Panthers' top scorer. It's driven him top of mind among pundits and oddsmakers.

Almost 50 years after winning the Conn Smythe in a losing effort, that final-round defeat stings a little less for Leach, who is grateful for everything hockey has given him. "I think of who I am, being First Nation and making it to the National Hockey League and accomplishing my dreams and goals that I wanted to do as a youngster: having the opportunity to do it with the best players in the world and being recognized as one of the best players in the world for a couple of years," he said. "Hockey was just a just a stepping stone to who I am today. I'm the luckiest guy in the world that I got to play. It's a wonderful, wonderful experience to play professional hockey in the National Hockey League."

Jolene Latimer is a features writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2024 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

When Stuart Skinner got a full-time job with the Edmonton Oilers in 2022, the main problem for fans was the simple fact that his jersey was nowhere to be found.

"You couldn't purchase a Skinner jersey," said Avarey Amyotte, whose son Owen was then a budding minor hockey goalie and obsessed with the born-and-bred Edmontonian.

Amyotte's dad, Don - who she describes as the ultimate hockey grandpa - came up with a solution.

"He ordered a custom Skinner jersey for Owen for Christmas," she remembers. "It was a scramble to make sure that it would come in time before Christmas. My dad was so excited that he got it all done."

But Don wouldn't live to see the results of his labor of love. A week after the jersey arrived, on Dec. 2, 2022, he died from prostate cancer. Amyotte kept his present a secret from her son until Christmas morning.

"We had a lot of family in town on Christmas morning, and when Owen opened that box and it was a custom Skinner jersey, it was very emotional," she said.

Amyotte later tracked down Skinner at a goalie clinic to get it signed. The jersey now hangs above Owen's bed - a daily reminder of not just his love of the game, but his grandpa's love for him.

Eighteen years ago, a different Oilers goalie served as inspiration for a certain young fan. Dwayne Roloson was the netminder during Edmonton's last run to the Stanley Cup Final in 2006. A young Stuart Skinner was just 7 years old.

"Roly the goalie was my idol," said Skinner, who remembers the sheer excitement any time he had the chance to watch the Oilers in person at the old Northlands Coliseum/Rexall Place.

"I will never forget Rexall Place," he said. "I absolutely love Rexall Place. It's one of those childhood kind of things that you look back on - being at the rink, watching teams, or just driving by and you're like, 'That's so cool.'"

Back then, Skinner always made sure the dial was tuned to sports talk radio where he could hear the latest Oilers news.

"We would always have the radio on whenever we hopped into the car," he said. "Whether it's going to school first thing in the morning, or going back home from school, or going to the rink."

The youngest child of nine, Skinner's earliest days in net were as target practice for his older siblings during road hockey games, which quickly morphed into an obsession for becoming a goalie.

"I could talk to you forever about why I wanted to be a goalie," he said. "I was just begging my family to be a goalie. I was always the one who wanted to go in the road hockey net."

But Skinner had a problem - his parents were less enthusiastic about him becoming a permanent fixture in net. Skinner's solution was simple.

"I didn't even give them a choice, really," he said. "One tryout, we just didn't have a goalie, so I told the coach I was going in. I didn't even ask permission. That was the end of it."

Skinner quickly asserted himself as one of the game's up-and-coming talents, compiling a .929 save percentage in his second year of U15 AAA hockey and getting drafted into the WHL the following year. There, he quickly earned the starting goalie position in Lethbridge, Alberta as a 16-year-old.

"Not a lot of 16-year-olds in that league," he said. "I remember getting drafted and them saying that they wanted me to play right away.

"Especially as a kid going from bantam and getting drafted and all that, you're all excited. Then, when they say that, you're like, 'Holy crap, I'm going to be playing in the WHL. That's pretty cool.' It was very exciting for me. Them giving me that opportunity was massive, because then I was just able to play a lot of games right away."

Skinner also enrolled in the hockey academy at Louis St. Laurent junior and senior high.

"He was well poised and had a lot going for him, and was way more mature for his age," teacher and coach Jaret Peel said. "He was someone who was very determined to work hard and do all the things needed to make sure that he was successful, that would get him to the next level."

Peel would often take shots on Skinner and use the opportunity to inflict his own form of resilience training.

"I would try to chirp him and get into his head every time I scored a goal," he said.

Skinner, known for being humble and unaffected, ultimately got the last chirp in an uncharacteristic moment of hubris. When he signed his first NHL contract after being selected 78th overall by the Oilers in the 2017 NHL Entry Draft, Peel texted him congratulations. Skinner replied, "Hey coach. Just to let you know, I'll make more in three years than you'll make in your career."

Since then, Skinner has cemented himself as the Oilers' starting goalie and a mainstay in the next generation's hockey dreams.

"He's used his mental fortitude to push past the tough times and move forward," Peel said. "He's used past experiences, coaches, and sports psychologists to help him get to where he is right now. That's the goalie in the Stanley Cup Final. And that's every kid's dream."

Skinner might be living the dream, but he's also defining it. His sway over the next generation of Edmonton fans now extends far beyond the ice, at least among the teens Peel coaches.

"Having a mustache is cool now," he said. "There are hundreds of them. They've got the peach fuzz. They're saying, 'I'm going to have a mustache one day like Stuart's got.'"

One of those up-and-comers is 14-year-old Amyotte, who isn't sporting the Skinner 'stache but has already followed in Skinner's footsteps by playing AAA for the same minor hockey club, South Side Athletic Club. He's also attending the same in-school hockey academy as Skinner. Amyotte posted a .881 save percentage through 18 games last season in U15.

"I've noticed throughout his whole NHL career - and even just this season - Skinner improves really fast," Amyotte said. "He plays so calm. He can read the play. He can kind of just read plays into the future."

As proof of Skinner's evolution, Amyotte pointed to his Game 6 clinic against Dallas where he made 33 saves to keep the score at 2-1 and give the Oilers their Finals berth.

"He pulled out strong, and it was basically just a battle between the other goalie," he said.

It's that real-time learning Skinner will have to draw upon as the Oilers look to dig themselves out of a 2-0 hole against Florida.

"We've been in a lot of worse situations," Skinner said after Wednesday's practice. "We've been in a situation where we were pretty well the last-place team in the league. We were down 3-2 against Vancouver, facing elimination, and we had to win two games. We've been in a lot of situations where you think that you're down and out. And I think that's when we play our best hockey, is when our backs are against the wall and the gun's pointing at us."

Skinner's self-talk might be different now, but he knows what he'd say to that 14-year-old version of himself back in junior high.

"I'd tell him to relax and know that it's all going to be OK. I would just tell him to really enjoy the whole process of getting up to where we are now. I would let him know that it's going to be hard. It's going to be tough. There are going to be a lot of ups and downs, a lot of bumps and bruises. But at the end of the day, it's all going to be worth it, and just trust yourself leading up to where we're headed."

Jolene Latimer is a features writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2024 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

It wouldn't have been a surprise to say in training camp that this season's Edmonton Oilers would be in the Stanley Cup Final. After finishing the 2022-23 season with Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl sitting first and second in scoring and the roster's core returning, the team expected to build on last year's Round 2 playoff exit.

But the reality was much different. The Oilers opened the campaign disastrously, losing 10 of their first 13 games. A particularly humiliating 3-2 loss to the cellar-dwelling San Jose Sharks tied them for last in the league. Even hitting rock bottom didn't change much.

"You go into the year with the expectation that you're one of the best teams in the league, and you're going to go to the Stanley Cup Final and have a chance to win," forward Zach Hyman said this week.

"All of a sudden, 15 games into the season, you're second-last. It's like, what happened? What's going on?"

The loss to San Jose was the second-last game of coach Jay Woodcroft's tenure. After compiling a 3-9-1 record, the team needed a new plan and a different voice to implement it.

Enter Kris Knoblauch.

Calm in chaos

In the fall of 2023, while the Oilers were chaotically trying to stop the bleeding, Knoblauch was settling into his fifth season behind the bench for the AHL's Hartford Wolf Pack, the New York Rangers' top affiliate.

"At the time, I was hoping to get my American League team into the playoffs, and we'll see what happens from there," Knoblauch said this week.

His position with the Wolf Pack was the natural extension of a long-time dream he nurtured as a young boy growing up in the Prairie town of Imperial, Saskatchewan. The New York Islanders drafted him in the seventh round in 1997 while he was playing junior hockey, but his playing career culminated with five seasons as a star for the University of Alberta men's team.

"When I was kid, thinking about getting to the NHL, having the opportunity to play, win a Stanley Cup, I always wanted to do it as a player," Knoblauch said. "Eventually, you realize you're not going to be able to compete as a player, maybe you can do it as a coach."

So Knoblauch started the grind. He began as an assistant coach for the Prince Albert Raiders and Kootenay Ice in the WHL. After Kootenay elevated him to the top job in 2010, he took the junior club to the Memorial Cup in his first season. Two campaigns later, Knoblauch landed in Erie, Pennsylvania, as the head coach of the Otters in the OHL.

"I just think about the sacrifices (my wife) made. ... How many times we moved, how many jobs she's given up," Knoblauch said. "If I was to go back - we probably made some poor decisions for her to quit the good, quality jobs that she had for me to chase some low-paying, below-poverty wages just to see what happens."

Those early days would prove fateful. Knoblauch first crossed paths with McDavid in 2012-13, the star's first year in Erie. In his three seasons with the Otters, McDavid amassed 285 points.

"Connor still does astonish me," Knoblauch said. "I think he won't be able to do it, and he does it again."

Following McDavid's departure to the NHL, Knoblauch led an Otters team featuring Alex DeBrincat to the Memorial Cup in 2017.

Despite various interviews for NHL coaching positions over the years - including one with current Florida Panthers coach Paul Maurice - Knoblauch's NHL resume only consisted of working as an assistant with the Philadelphia Flyers from 2017-19. He'd been with the Wolfpack for four seasons before the Oilers called.

"He came in when we were at rock bottom," Hyman said. "I think he just instilled a wave of calmness and confidence."

Edmonton won Knoblauch's first two contests but then gave up 17 goals in a three-game losing streak to start a road trip. But that was the end of the misery. Edmonton won 24 of its next 27, including a 16-game winning streak - the second longest in NHL history.

By mid-November, around the time of Knoblauch's arrival, McDavid had dropped to 126th in scoring despite coming off a 153-point MVP campaign.

McDavid finished the regular season third overall in the points race with 132, just 12 back of leader Nikita Kucherov. Hyman also benefited, becoming the seventh player in franchise history to score 50 goals on his way to a career-high 54. He leads all playoff scorers with 14 through three rounds.

"He helped some of our best players. We were all struggling. I think that's why our team was where we were. And he came in just with a calming presence, the process-based plan," Hyman said.

The Oilers compiled a dominating 46-18-5 record under Knoblauch to rise to second in the Pacific Division behind the Vancouver Canucks.

"He just brought such a calming and relaxing presence," goalie Stuart Skinner said. "He's so stoic and so calm. I think that was just his attitude about coming in. It was massive for us. Because obviously, being an Oiler can be a stressful, stressful thing, especially with outside noise and outside pressure. He was just a rock for us, and he's been a rock for us for this whole entire year."

Cool and collected

As the Oilers head into Saturday's Game 1 of the finals, Knoblauch is looking to maintain the calmness he instituted when he took the helm in November.

"The Stanley Cup Finals are different," he said. "There are more media requests, more interviews, there's just more attention, more things in the papers. … It's just settling everything down and making it feel like just a regular game. We just want our players to be able to play our game and, when they're on the ice, just be able to focus on playing. You can get too caught up in everything else that's going on often easily. Guys get distracted."

On that point, he's already leading by example.

Reaching the finals was a lifelong dream for Knoblauch, and he achieved it on June 2 with a 2-1 win over the Dallas Stars, propelling the Oilers to their first finals appearance since 2006. Instead of letting his excitement show through with over-the-top verbosity, Knoblauch maintained the calmness he's become known for.

"I don't have any words," he said after the victory. "This is remarkable."

Jolene Latimer is a features writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2024 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

It wouldn't have been a surprise to say in training camp that this season's Edmonton Oilers would be in the Stanley Cup Final. After finishing the 2022-23 season with Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl sitting first and second in scoring and the roster's core returning, the team expected to build on last year's Round 2 playoff exit.

But the reality was much different. The Oilers opened the campaign disastrously, losing 10 of their first 13 games. A particularly humiliating 3-2 loss to the cellar-dwelling San Jose Sharks tied them for last in the league. Even hitting rock bottom didn't change much.

"You go into the year with the expectation that you're one of the best teams in the league, and you're going to go to the Stanley Cup Final and have a chance to win," forward Zach Hyman said this week.

"All of a sudden, 15 games into the season, you're second-last. It's like, what happened? What's going on?"

The loss to San Jose was the second-last game of coach Jay Woodcroft's tenure. After compiling a 3-9-1 record, the team needed a new plan and a different voice to implement it.

Enter Kris Knoblauch.

Calm in chaos

In the fall of 2023, while the Oilers were chaotically trying to stop the bleeding, Knoblauch was settling into his fifth season behind the bench for the AHL's Hartford Wolf Pack, the New York Rangers' top affiliate.

"At the time, I was hoping to get my American League team into the playoffs, and we'll see what happens from there," Knoblauch said this week.

His position with the Wolf Pack was the natural extension of a long-time dream he nurtured as a young boy growing up in the Prairie town of Imperial, Saskatchewan. The New York Islanders drafted him in the seventh round in 1997 while he was playing junior hockey, but his playing career culminated with five seasons as a star for the University of Alberta men's team.

"When I was kid, thinking about getting to the NHL, having the opportunity to play, win a Stanley Cup, I always wanted to do it as a player," Knoblauch said. "Eventually, you realize you're not going to be able to compete as a player, maybe you can do it as a coach."

So Knoblauch started the grind. He began as an assistant coach for the Prince Albert Raiders and Kootenay Ice in the WHL. After Kootenay elevated him to the top job in 2010, he took the junior club to the Memorial Cup in his first season. Two campaigns later, Knoblauch landed in Erie, Pennsylvania, as the head coach of the Otters in the OHL.

"I just think about the sacrifices (my wife) made. ... How many times we moved, how many jobs she's given up," Knoblauch said. "If I was to go back - we probably made some poor decisions for her to quit the good, quality jobs that she had for me to chase some low-paying, below-poverty wages just to see what happens."

Those early days would prove fateful. Knoblauch first crossed paths with McDavid in 2012-13, the star's first year in Erie. In his three seasons with the Otters, McDavid amassed 285 points.

"Connor still does astonish me," Knoblauch said. "I think he won't be able to do it, and he does it again."

Following McDavid's departure to the NHL, Knoblauch led an Otters team featuring Alex DeBrincat to the Memorial Cup in 2017.

Despite various interviews for NHL coaching positions over the years - including one with current Florida Panthers coach Paul Maurice - Knoblauch's NHL resume only consisted of working as an assistant with the Philadelphia Flyers from 2017-19. He'd been with the Wolfpack for four seasons before the Oilers called.

"He came in when we were at rock bottom," Hyman said. "I think he just instilled a wave of calmness and confidence."

Edmonton won Knoblauch's first two contests but then gave up 17 goals in a three-game losing streak to start a road trip. But that was the end of the misery. Edmonton won 24 of its next 27, including a 16-game winning streak - the second longest in NHL history.

By mid-November, around the time of Knoblauch's arrival, McDavid had dropped to 126th in scoring despite coming off a 153-point MVP campaign.

McDavid finished the regular season third overall in the points race with 132, just 12 back of leader Nikita Kucherov. Hyman also benefited, becoming the seventh player in franchise history to score 50 goals on his way to a career-high 54. He leads all playoff scorers with 14 through three rounds.

"He helped some of our best players. We were all struggling. I think that's why our team was where we were. And he came in just with a calming presence, the process-based plan," Hyman said.

The Oilers compiled a dominating 46-18-5 record under Knoblauch to rise to second in the Pacific Division behind the Vancouver Canucks.

"He just brought such a calming and relaxing presence," goalie Stuart Skinner said. "He's so stoic and so calm. I think that was just his attitude about coming in. It was massive for us. Because obviously, being an Oiler can be a stressful, stressful thing, especially with outside noise and outside pressure. He was just a rock for us, and he's been a rock for us for this whole entire year."

Cool and collected

As the Oilers head into Saturday's Game 1 of the finals, Knoblauch is looking to maintain the calmness he instituted when he took the helm in November.

"The Stanley Cup Finals are different," he said. "There are more media requests, more interviews, there's just more attention, more things in the papers. … It's just settling everything down and making it feel like just a regular game. We just want our players to be able to play our game and, when they're on the ice, just be able to focus on playing. You can get too caught up in everything else that's going on often easily. Guys get distracted."

On that point, he's already leading by example.

Reaching the finals was a lifelong dream for Knoblauch, and he achieved it on June 2 with a 2-1 win over the Dallas Stars, propelling the Oilers to their first finals appearance since 2006. Instead of letting his excitement show through with over-the-top verbosity, Knoblauch maintained the calmness he's become known for.

"I don't have any words," he said after the victory. "This is remarkable."

Jolene Latimer is a features writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2024 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

You've heard of football's Puppy Bowl; now get ready for hockey's version: the Stanley Pup. It seems the play on words was just too hard to resist for the NHL, which will host its version of a rescue dog competition featuring not only canine stars but players like Nick Suzuki and Anze Kopitar and coach John Tortorella.

"It's really entertaining, there are lots of puns, but it's a great show, and I think people will enjoy the entertainment," said Matt Nicholson, the NHL's vice president of production and creative development.

The executive admitted there were a few natural stars among the 16 dogs representing NHL clubs, saying, "All the pups are great, but I think everyone might find Roman Yorkie super, super cute."

Nicholson added: "Nikita Poocherov also put on a show. And we'll see if people think Connor McDoodle has good stuff."

The move is more than just a gimmick by the NHL and fits into its fan-development strategy. Recent polling suggests at least one in three members of Gen Z - defined as between the ages of 13 and 25 - don't watch live sports and consume the game "through a different lens," as NHL chief marketing officer Heidi Browning previously told theScore.

The Stanley Pup broadcast will try to deliver on the idea of letting fans learn more about the league's players off the ice. "If (a player is) holding a 10-week puppy, they obviously let their guard down and get to talk about something that they're passionate about," Nicholson said.

The Stanley Pup isn't the only initiative launched with fan engagement in mind. The league also announced it's airing alternative Stanley Cup Final broadcasts in American Sign Language, a first for a major North American sport. Deaf play-by-play and color commentators will call the games as they see them rather than providing translations of the spoken calls. The broadcasts will be available through ESPN+ and Sportsnet+.

"There's a little bit of strategy there. And there's a little bit of … let's make our fans happy across all spectrums," Nicholson said.

The Stanley Pup airs Friday at 8 p.m. ET on NHL Network and ESPN+ in the U.S. and Saturday at 6 p.m. ET on Sportsnet in Canada.

theScore caught up with Nicholson to ask about the strategy behind the Stanley Pup and the art of working with puppies.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

theScore: What inspired the idea to host a Stanley Pup competition? Did you watch the Puppy Bowl and want to do something similar?

Nicholson: It was an idea we had a couple of years ago. ... The league has done a lot of work with rescue organizations, the teams do a lot of work with dogs, whether it's seeing-eye dogs or team dog calendars, and it just made sense. Subconsciously, possibly (the NFL's Puppy Bowl factored in), but we didn't want to copy them. You know - Stanley Cup, Stanley Pup, it kind of just works.

How does this fit into the league's efforts to remain relevant in an increasingly competitive North American professional sports landscape?

Nicholson: The Stanley Cup is certainly the greatest trophy in sports. And whenever we can do something to get our players in front of different fans, we take the opportunity. We've learned that there are hockey fans out there, whether they're also baseball fans or WWE or NASCAR fans. When we get an opportunity to get a show on ESPN+ or Sportsnet that's not only doing good but can build us some fans right before an amazing final with these two teams, it's something that's a no-brainer for us.

Fans are always asking for more personality from hockey players, how does this achieve that?

Nicholson: It's just tough not to show personality when you have players holding puppies. There are plenty of other sports where their players are not as outgoing as maybe the league would hope, but I think our players do a great job. They're starting to build their social media platforms, and the players we asked, especially from the (Washington) Capitals, were generous in giving their time.

Tell me about the process of putting the show together.

Nicholson: It's a show with puppies, and you can only direct them so much. Puppies operate on their own schedule. They sleep when they want, they go to the bathroom when they want. That's the joy of it. It's unscripted. The true competition is the puppies having fun, and you just see what you get from that. We created presentations for how they enter the ice or the rink. We did puppy cards for all of them. So yeah, you operate on their schedule. It's not like a Hollywood production - we're going to take a lunch break when they want.

A lot of it is just the enjoyment, seeing what the puppies can do. And then you create the program around it, and you do some features showcasing all the pups. There's something satisfying about getting a rescue and saving that life. There's a line in the show that says, "When you adopt a rescue dog, you actually save two dogs because there is another dog that's going to take his spot in a second."

I know that Tortorella makes a special appearance on the show. He has a special passion for rescue dogs, doesn't he?

Nicholson: He has his own foundation. He tells the story in the show, and I'm not going to ruin it. His family went to a rescue organization, and it impacted him greatly because he didn't really know what was going on with rescue dogs prior to that. Then, all of a sudden, realizing that these dogs are being put down, it just became a passion project of his.

Do you think this will become an annual NHL tradition?

Nicholson: I don't want to say we're completely looking ahead to next season, but we hope this is something that continues. We have ideas on how to make it bigger and better next year. We already had some teams reach out and ask, 'How can we participate in this?' It would be amazing if this becomes a franchise for us.

Jolene Latimer is a features writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2024 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

You've heard of football's Puppy Bowl; now get ready for hockey's version: the Stanley Pup. It seems the play on words was just too hard to resist for the NHL, which will host its version of a rescue dog competition featuring not only canine stars but players like Nick Suzuki and Anze Kopitar and coach John Tortorella.

"It's really entertaining, there are lots of puns, but it's a great show, and I think people will enjoy the entertainment," said Matt Nicholson, the NHL's vice president of production and creative development.

The executive admitted there were a few natural stars among the 16 dogs representing NHL clubs, saying, "All the pups are great, but I think everyone might find Roman Yorkie super, super cute."

Nicholson added: "Nikita Poocherov also put on a show. And we'll see if people think Connor McDoodle has good stuff."

The move is more than just a gimmick by the NHL and fits into its fan-development strategy. Recent polling suggests at least one in three members of Gen Z - defined as between the ages of 13 and 25 - don't watch live sports and consume the game "through a different lens," as NHL chief marketing officer Heidi Browning previously told theScore.

The Stanley Pup broadcast will try to deliver on the idea of letting fans learn more about the league's players off the ice. "If (a player is) holding a 10-week puppy, they obviously let their guard down and get to talk about something that they're passionate about," Nicholson said.

The Stanley Pup isn't the only initiative launched with fan engagement in mind. The league also announced it's airing alternative Stanley Cup Final broadcasts in American Sign Language, a first for a major North American sport. Deaf play-by-play and color commentators will call the games as they see them rather than providing translations of the spoken calls. The broadcasts will be available through ESPN+ and Sportsnet+.

"There's a little bit of strategy there. And there's a little bit of … let's make our fans happy across all spectrums," Nicholson said.

The Stanley Pup airs Friday at 8 p.m. ET on NHL Network and ESPN+ in the U.S. and Saturday at 6 p.m. ET on Sportsnet in Canada.

theScore caught up with Nicholson to ask about the strategy behind the Stanley Pup and the art of working with puppies.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

theScore: What inspired the idea to host a Stanley Pup competition? Did you watch the Puppy Bowl and want to do something similar?

Nicholson: It was an idea we had a couple of years ago. ... The league has done a lot of work with rescue organizations, the teams do a lot of work with dogs, whether it's seeing-eye dogs or team dog calendars, and it just made sense. Subconsciously, possibly (the NFL's Puppy Bowl factored in), but we didn't want to copy them. You know - Stanley Cup, Stanley Pup, it kind of just works.

How does this fit into the league's efforts to remain relevant in an increasingly competitive North American professional sports landscape?

Nicholson: The Stanley Cup is certainly the greatest trophy in sports. And whenever we can do something to get our players in front of different fans, we take the opportunity. We've learned that there are hockey fans out there, whether they're also baseball fans or WWE or NASCAR fans. When we get an opportunity to get a show on ESPN+ or Sportsnet that's not only doing good but can build us some fans right before an amazing final with these two teams, it's something that's a no-brainer for us.

Fans are always asking for more personality from hockey players, how does this achieve that?

Nicholson: It's just tough not to show personality when you have players holding puppies. There are plenty of other sports where their players are not as outgoing as maybe the league would hope, but I think our players do a great job. They're starting to build their social media platforms, and the players we asked, especially from the (Washington) Capitals, were generous in giving their time.

Tell me about the process of putting the show together.

Nicholson: It's a show with puppies, and you can only direct them so much. Puppies operate on their own schedule. They sleep when they want, they go to the bathroom when they want. That's the joy of it. It's unscripted. The true competition is the puppies having fun, and you just see what you get from that. We created presentations for how they enter the ice or the rink. We did puppy cards for all of them. So yeah, you operate on their schedule. It's not like a Hollywood production - we're going to take a lunch break when they want.

A lot of it is just the enjoyment, seeing what the puppies can do. And then you create the program around it, and you do some features showcasing all the pups. There's something satisfying about getting a rescue and saving that life. There's a line in the show that says, "When you adopt a rescue dog, you actually save two dogs because there is another dog that's going to take his spot in a second."

I know that Tortorella makes a special appearance on the show. He has a special passion for rescue dogs, doesn't he?

Nicholson: He has his own foundation. He tells the story in the show, and I'm not going to ruin it. His family went to a rescue organization, and it impacted him greatly because he didn't really know what was going on with rescue dogs prior to that. Then, all of a sudden, realizing that these dogs are being put down, it just became a passion project of his.

Do you think this will become an annual NHL tradition?

Nicholson: I don't want to say we're completely looking ahead to next season, but we hope this is something that continues. We have ideas on how to make it bigger and better next year. We already had some teams reach out and ask, 'How can we participate in this?' It would be amazing if this becomes a franchise for us.

Jolene Latimer is a features writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2024 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

It would become one of the most iconic statements ever made in hockey.

Thirty years ago, such news wasn't delivered by social media or push alert, but the old-fashioned way: newspaper. That's how Nick Kypreos remembers reading it. The Rangers' bus had just pulled up to Brendan Byrne Arena in New Jersey to deliver the team to its date with destiny: a win-or-go-home Game 6 showdown against the Devils in the 1994 Eastern Conference Final. The Rangers, who finished the regular season atop the standings, just endured back-to-back losses to the underdog Devils and were now facing elimination on the road.

Kypreos sat beside defenseman Brian Leetch on the drive to New Jersey and the two were the last off the bus. "One of the seats in the front of the bus had a copy of the New York Post," says Kypreos, and on the back pages were the words that would go down in hockey history: "We'll win tonight," a bold prediction issued by captain Mark Messier.

"Brian stopped, looked at the paper, then turned around, looked at me, and said, 'I guess we're going to win tonight,'" says Kypreos. Those three words went viral, the momentum propelling the Rangers to a pivotal win that paved the way for the franchise's first Stanley Cup in 54 years.

"At the time I thought, 'That's something Mark would seldom do,'" remembers former Rangers forward Craig MacTavish. But there it was in black and white, read all about it. "He felt so strongly in the team's ability to bounce back and win Game 6, and not only the team's ability, but his own. It was a pretty courageous, ballsy thing to do."

Thirty years later, the Rangers again face a tough road Game 6 in Round 3 of the playoffs. They're down 3-2 to the Panthers, and remain two wins from the Cup Final for the first time since 2014, in their quest to bring New York its first title since 1994. While there will never be another Messier, captain Jacob Trouba is flanked by Igor Shesterkin, Vincent Trocheck, Artemi Panarin, Chris Kreider, and Mika Zibanejad, who lead today's squad. These Rangers have a chance to create their own iconic postseason moment - if they can rise to the occasion like their predecessors.

Paving the way for a storyline

By the time Messier's Rangers faced the Devils in 1994, the fan base was desperate for a championship - but it wasn't always that way. When the Rangers joined the league as an expansion team in the 1926-27 season, they immediately established themselves as one of the era's most dominant squads, winning the Stanley Cup over the Montreal Maroons in their second season and again in 1933 and 1940.

But those heady times didn't last, and the team's subsequent poor performance was so incredulous that it led some to consider the franchise cursed.

One of the more superstitious theories claims that in the 1939-40 season, the mortgage on Madison Square Garden was repaid and its papers burned in the Stanley Cup. In retribution for desecrating the sport's holy grail, the Rangers were sentenced by the hockey gods to indefinite bad luck. Others agree the curse was real but cite Red Dutton as the cause. The disgruntled former coach and general manager of the New York Americans, which folded during World War II, was said to hold a grudge against the Rangers for their staying power.

Whether the cause was mystical or pragmatic, the Rangers after 1940 endured one of the longest championship droughts in NHL history. Tantalizing near misses in 1950 and 1979 added insult to injury.

"The Rangers' theme was that they were losers," says Jerry Eskenazi, who covered the team in the late 1960s and early 1970s for The New York Times. Back then, the club was essentially irrelevant in the New York sports landscape. Eskenazi remembers his first assignment covering the team: "The sports editor looks up the date book, what was going on that day, and he says, 'This is something interesting: the Rangers open the season today.'" The Times' sports desk didn't know the local hockey team's season was starting, nor had it scheduled a reporter to attend the opener.

Occasional flashes of promise in the following decades weren't enough to erase the impact of the Rangers' continued failure to win another championship. "Even though they might have won games and were competitive, there was always that harking back to 1940," says Eskenazi.

1940 wasn't just a theme; it became a chant. Opposing fans would use it to taunt each generation of Rangers players and fans through the 1970s, 80s, and into the 1990s as the team kept falling short.

"They got close in the early 1970s," says John Kreiser, whose book, "The Wait Is Over: The New York Rangers and the 1994 Stanley Cup," chronicles the legendary Cup run. "They had some good teams in the 80s, but the Islanders were always better, or the Oilers were always better."

In 1989, the Rangers hired general manager Neil Smith. "He was running Detroit's minor-league system after he left the Islanders. They hired him as much because they couldn't get somebody who was a bigger name to take the job," Kreiser says. But Smith made an immediate impact. "In his first year they won the division title, which was the first time they'd finished first, at any level, since 1942," Kreiser says.

The tides turned in earnest in 1991 when the Rangers acquired star center Messier in a blockbuster trade with the Oilers for Bernie Nicholls, Steven Rice, and Louie DeBrusk. Messier was subsequently joined by ex-Oilers teammates Jeff Beukeboom (included in the trade), Glenn Anderson, Kevin Lowe, MacTavish, Adam Graves, and Esa Tikkanen - a sizeable portion of the Oilers' Cup dynasty.

"One of the things that I remember Neil telling me was that he really felt there was value, because when he looked at that roster there were, like, seven guys from the Oilers dynasty on there. He was very adamant that was important because you needed guys who knew how to win," Kreiser says. "He wanted Messier and Lowe and MacTavish to pump some winning life in there."

The move didn't go unnoticed among rivals. "We scoffed at the fact they were basically raiding the Oilers for these guys," says legendary Devils broadcaster and hockey historian Stan Fischler. "Gretzky was the ultimate artist, but Messier, for his time, was the most menacing," he says.

The Devils were about to see just how menacing "Moose" could be.

Rising to the occasion

Anyone watching Game 4 of the 1990 Campbell Conference Final between Chicago, which was leading the series 2-1, and Edmonton knew Messier was not to be trifled with. The Oilers narrowly escaped the first round, clawing their way back from a 3-1 deficit. Now, they were in a similar situation, in a must-win game against the Blackhawks.

"To me, that was the best game (Messier) ever played," MacTavish says. "He had a hat trick, and he was just a man possessed. We knew we couldn't go down 3-1 again. He single-handedly broke the spirit of that whole organization in Game 4."

A 4-2 routing helped the Oilers gain the momentum necessary to win three straight and eliminate the Blackhawks. They beat the Bruins in the Cup Final in five games - without Wayne Gretzky.

"For me, 1990 was pretty special to win without Wayne, which is no small accomplishment," MacTavish says.

As for Messier: "He reached another level of superpower there," says MacTavish.

It was a superpower he'd call upon again four years later, this time as Rangers captain.

In 1994, the Rangers went 52-24-8 - the best record in the NHL. If there was a year to break the curse, this was it. "The moment you became a New York Ranger, you inherited that heartache," says Kypreos, who now co-hosts Sportsnet's podcast, "Real Kyper and Bourne."

"The sense of urgency for us to win that particular year was never lost on us," he adds. "I got traded at the beginning of the season and it took all of 30 seconds for me walking down Fifth Avenue for people to come up to me and say, 'You know, we got this drought since the 1940s.'"

Capitalizing on that urgency, the Rangers swept the Islanders in the first round and then ousted the Capitals in five games. Waiting for them in the conference finals were the Devils, who finished second overall in the league at 47-25-12. The Devils might have finished first overall - if they weren't swept by the Rangers in six regular-season games.

"The Devils were a younger team," Fischler says. "Marty Brodeur was in his second year in goal. They surprised a lot of people. They started the series as the underdogs."

The best-of-seven opened with a 4-3 double-overtime Devils win, but the Rangers fought back to take a 2-1 series lead. Then, the Devils answered with some firepower of their own, handing the Rangers back-to-back losses, limiting them to one goal in each game, to take a 3-2 lead back to New Jersey.

"They looked like they might pull off an upset," Fischler says.

The nervousness rippled throughout the fan base. "The fans came into Game 6 looking at, 'Well, if we lose, we're done. We've wasted another really good chance to end 54 years of misery,'" says Kreiser.

The players felt the pressure, too. "The stakes were extremely high," says MacTavish.

And that's when Messier guaranteed the win.

Some say his words were overblown by the New York press. "Did Mess really guarantee a win or did the writer set it up for him?" asked Fischler.

Messier's exact words were: "We can win and will win." But he was savvy enough to know what the press would do with that quote. "He knew they were going to run with it pretty hard, and he agreed to it," says MacTavish.

"Mark told me 20 years later that part of the reason he did it was to keep his guys' spirits up," says Kreiser.

Making a claim is one thing; backing it up is something else entirely. When the puck dropped to start Game 6 on May 25, 1994, it looked like Messier might be stymied. The Devils overwhelmed the Rangers within the first five minutes with three two-on-one chances and notched eight of the game's first nine shots. New York managed just nine shots on goal in the first, none of them finding the back of the net. "They were taking it to us pretty good, I remember," says MacTavish.

"The Devils just totally dominated the first two periods," says Kreiser. "They were up 2-0. And the only reason it wasn't 6-0 was (goaltender) Mike Richter."

Ultimately, Richter faced 26 shots in the first two periods, letting in two. Decent numbers, but it was hardly guaranteed he'd stay in net. Coach Mike Keenan pulled him in Game 4 under similar circumstances, opting for backup Glenn Healy.

"Everybody in the building and throughout Manhattan was probably thinking, 'When's he going to pull Richter?'" Keenan later told his autobiography writer Scott Morrison. Their book, "Iron Mike: My Life Behind the Bench," releases in October. But according to Morrison, Keenan wasn't even considering pulling Richter.

"'(Richter) kept us in that game, he kept us in that period, we could have been down easily by four or five goals. So, I stuck with him and hoped that the team would feed off of that kind of response and react accordingly,'" Morrison remembers Keenan saying.

That turned out to be prescient. "Without Richter, that game wouldn't have been what it was," says Healy.

"That's what goaltending means at this point in the season," says Kypreos. "Goalies are the only ones who play the entire game on the ice."

"His outstanding performance is what kept us in the game and allowed (Messier) to do what he did in the third period," says Healy. "Richter's goaltending in Game 6 was an exquisite performance."

It wasn't until late in the second period when the Rangers got on the board, on a goal by Alex Kovalev assisted by Messier. It didn't just change the momentum; it changed everything.

"It was that Kovalev goal," says Fischler. "Everything was nice and then suddenly this guy is coming down the right side and he beats Brodeur.

"I did interviews between periods. And I had Bernie Nicholls on for the Devils. Not only myself but others who heard the interview were convinced by his body language and things he said that the Devils were fading, they were tiring, they were going to lose the lead. He seemed resigned to the fact the third period was not going to favor the Devils. Nicholls was a very savvy guy, he knew that things weren't going to be too good up ahead."

That's when Messier found his other superpower level - the one he accessed in Chicago in 1990. Early in the third period, he snuck a backhander by Brodeur, tying the score at 2-2. Messier secured the go-ahead goal, too, in the middle of the frame, off a rebound. He bagged the insurance goal late, shorthanded into an empty net.

"I was ecstatic for the win," MacTavish says. "Secondly, I was in awe of the prediction - and then to back it up with a hat trick?"

"I don't think anybody in New York had ever seen something like that, where a guy puts his neck in a noose and then delivers like that," Kreiser says. "People were shaking their heads - happily."

The series went back to MSG for Game 7, which the Rangers won 2-1. They'd play one final Game 7 in the next round, beating the Vancouver Canucks at home to secure their first Stanley Cup in 54 years.

The guarantee's legacy

"You know, over my career, I can isolate specific games that are never, never forgotten," says Fischler, who speaks as if Game 6 was played a week ago. Speaking with him, it's clear: this is one of those games.

"There were a lot of storylines going. And it was very, very emotional," he says.

Perhaps it's the Rangers-Devils rivalry that'll live the longest - even after the legend of the Guarantee Game fades into history. "The rivalry is now part of the fabric of that area," Kypreos says. "It stands the test of time."

So far, no cohort of the Rangers has been able to top - or even match - what Messier's squad did in 1994. "They haven't won since then," Kreiser says. "That's one of the things that stretches out the story of the Guarantee Game."

It's unlikely we're getting a Game 6 guarantee from this year's Rangers, and their task remains formidable. "What Messier did is what separates the good from the iconic - absolutely iconic," says MacTavish. "They make it happen when it needs to happen."

But these Rangers can take solace: It's not impossible. Messier proved that.

Jolene Latimer is a features writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2024 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.