EDMONTON, Alberta — In Raleigh, fans wear their hockey jerseys to games. In Edmonton they wear them to work, to bed and to weddings.
Championship banners gently flutter from the rafters of Rexall Place, a reminder of the Edmonton Oilers' glorious past when Wayne Gretzky and Mark Messier led the team to Stanley Cups.
Banners also hang from the roof of RBC Center in Raleigh but most pay homage to the North Carolina State Wolfpack's rich basketball tradition, not Edmonton's Stanley Cup final opponents, the Carolina Hurricanes.
This year's final is as much a tale of two cities as of two teams who are among the National Hockey League's (NHL) smallest markets.
With five months of bitterly cold Prairie winter, Edmonton is hardcore hockey country while college basketball rules in Raleigh, where snow and the Hurricanes remain a curiosity.
Since the Hartford Whalers relocated to Raleigh in 1999, the Hurricanes have established themselves on the ice, reaching the finals twice in the last four years.
They have struggled to gain a foothold, however, in a sports market dominated by NASCAR and college hoops.
"Hockey has been here six, seven years. It didn't exist as a sport pretty much. It's come a long way," recalled captain Rod Brind'Amour.
"It's a small town, small-town feel, but you know we're entrenched in the community now and we're becoming a big part of it."
Experiencing Boom
With the Canadian dollar and oil prices on the rise, Edmonton is also experiencing a boom and the Oilers have been part of that, returning to the Stanley Cup final for the first time in 16 years.
This season, the Oilers sold out all but one game at the 16,839-seat Rexall place, the team once again assuming a prominent role in Edmontonians' lives.
After winning five Stanley Cups in seven years in the 1980s, Edmonton became known as "The City of Champions". However, once Gretzky and Messier left town, the Oilers began a slow, steady decline into a financial abyss.
In 1997 the struggling franchise was finally put up for sale and nearly moved to Texas until a community ownership group stepped forward to save the team and keep it in Edmonton.
Playing in the NHL's smallest market, the NHL's most northern outpost continued to struggle under the burden of rising salaries until a year-long labour dispute ended in a salary cap which levelled the playing field and allowed teams such as Edmonton and Carolina to compete for top players.
Eight years after the Hurricanes set up shop in Raleigh there are still people in the region getting their first taste of hockey during these Stanley Cup finals.
In Edmonton, almost every one of the area's nearly one million residents seems to know someone connected with the team.
To the locals, the team is known simply as "the Oil" and "Gretz" and "Mess" are talked about like next-door neighbours.
Inside the two arenas there has been little to distinguish the sides during the first five games of the best-of-seven final which the Hurricanes lead 3-2.
Raucous Fans
Both teams can claim some of the most raucous fans and loudest buildings in the NHL.
At the RBC Center the stands are awash with red-and-white hockey sweaters but take a few steps beyond the tailgate partying and there is little evidence the Stanley Cup is in town.
In Edmonton, where game six of the final takes place on Saturday, the excitement is almost impossible to escape.
Oilers flags hang from the windows of seemingly every home and from the aerials of almost every car.
The celebrations occasionally turned violent as thousands of Oilers supporters gathered along Whytes Avenue setting fires and smashing windows, resulting in hundreds of arrests.
So intense was the spotlight that the team had to escape to New York after clinching the Western conference title as they waited for the Eastern conference to be decided.
"They (the fans) have given us a lift when we have needed it and they have been very supportive of us through this playoff run, gave us the energy when we needed it against San Jose, gave us the energy in the third period against Detroit in game six when we were down by a couple," said Edmonton coach Craig MacTavish. "So it's important.
"There's no secret, as a player you get energised by the emotion in the building.
"When so many people are so solidly behind you, you want to make sure that you are playing your best hockey. You get an adrenaline rush from it."
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