Pat Conacher knows what it feels like to make National Hockey League history.
The Stanley Cup Finals head south, with Game 3 set for Amerant Bank Arena in Sunrise, Fla., on Monday. The Edmonton Oilers and Florida Panthers split the first two games played in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
No matter how many years a former skater or goalie is into retirement, or how many teams they dressed for, in whatever league dangled a contract to keep their professional dreams afloat, players never forget teammates.
Players also may have habits of forgetting where they left their car keys on a given day or what they ate for dinner the previous night, but when you are part of a group contributing to a championship season, the memories are deeply and colorfully etched in one’s mind.
Conacher is keeping close tabs on how his hometown Oilers fare in this spring’s Cup Finals. As a son of the Calgary-Edmonton Corridor, as an Edmontonian, just as millions of hockey fans live and die with the outcomes of Oilers’ games,
Conacher shares in the most special relationship toward the team possible. During his fifth professional season in 1983–1984, after being a high draft pick by the New York Rangers in 1979 and bouncing up and down regularly with their minor league affiliates, Conacher landed with the Oilers.
Right time, right place. The building of a hockey dynasty in Western Canada was in full bloom. Names such as Gretzky, Messier, Kurri, and Fuhr, Hockey Hall of Famers all, were jelling as an elite unit that would dominate the NHL for nearly a decade.
When the Oilers defeated the New York Islanders on May 19, 1984, at Edmonton’s Northlands Coliseum winning the series in five games, Conacher went from being on the bench, as the clock ticked down on the Cup Finals, to leaping onto the ice, celebrating with his teammates.
“The Finals are so hard on your emotions,” Conacher, 66, told The Epoch Times on Friday by phone from his home in Calgary, Alberta. “Your emotions get higher than ever, shift by shift. For me, it was as if time was standing still. The dream so many kids grow up having, winning the Stanley Cup, it just doesn’t seem real when it happens to you.”
When the Oilers went to their second Finals in 1984, after winning the Campbell Conference championship, and the New York Islanders representing the NHL’s Wales Conference looking to collect a fifth consecutive Finals title, Conacher remembers a level of confidence his teammates displayed that he had never seen.
The previous season, the Islanders won their fourth straight NHL championship by sweeping the Oilers in four games. Prior to New York’s dominance of the league, it was the Montreal Canadiens who collected four consecutive Cups.
Eight seasons and the NHL had but two champions. Edmonton was celebrating only their fifth NHL season in 1983–1984, as the Oilers were one of four organizations welcomed during the merger with the World Hockey Association.
In looking back at being on the same roster with some of the NHL’s all-time best, Conacher, as a fan, is equally pumped for the current players leading Edmonton’s back-to-back Finals appearance.
“Absolutely, I’m a fan,” explains Conacher, who on the 1984 Cup winner was one of three Oilers from Edmonton. “My oldest son, who is 40, is a huge Oilers fan. We are all following the series.”
Although 41 years have passed since the Oilers first celebrated a Stanley Cup championship, on home ice no less, that moment of hockey euphoria as the buzzer goes off in the final period, Conacher hasn’t forgotten what he labels the “happiest part of winning.”
Exchanging hugs on the ice with his teammates and getting to hold the Stanley Cup, for Conacher, returning to the Oilers’ locker room was where the most memorable celebration commenced.
“It’s hard to explain. The Oilers brought our families to the locker room. These were the people who encouraged us as children to play street hockey, that drove us to early morning practices at rinks, while battling some of the most frigid temperatures and weather conditions. Parents, wives, friends, the celebration was for them, too.”
For Conacher, who during the 1983–1984 NHL season skated in 45 games and collected 10 points for Edmonton, once leaving the Coliseum and returning home, that was a bitter pill for him to swallow. Once in bed, Conacher remembers depression setting in.
The chase of the Cup was over, as well as the season that he split with the Oilers and their Central Hockey League affiliate in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The adrenal rush was gone. The parade that had an estimated 75,000 fans lined up in downtown Edmonton would soon be history, too. There was no longer a need to have an “edge” to his every day routine.
“Everything happened so quickly. We [the Oilers] celebrated with champagne, took off our gear, and that was it,” Conacher tells of his last game ever skating for Edmonton.
Retired from hockey in 2023, after scouting for the Vancouver Canucks, Conacher exited the game with a Stanley Cup championship ring, which is tucked away in a safe box, and happily married for 44 years.
This weekend, Conacher is joining his former New Jersey Devils’ teammates in Portland, Oregon, for a celebration of life of Tom McVie. McVie, who died last January at 89, had coached for more than 25 years in seven professional leagues.
Looking forward to sharing memories with friends, many who he hasn’t seen in years, is what fuels Conacher’s hockey juices these days. Expecting a grandchild next month, good conversation with old friends this weekend, possibly an Edmonton Cup championship in June, no wonder Conacher sports a lasting grin during the NHL’s happiest of times.
