It’s been a long time since Edmonton made its mark as the “City of Champions.” In fact, it’s been 30 years since the Edmonton Oilers captured their fifth and last Stanley Cup with captain Mark Messier and Conn Smythe Trophy-winning goalie Bill Ranford.

However, Canadian hockey fans hope their World Junior team will add some new lustre to the northern Alberta capital by winning the gold medal at Rogers Place on 5 January 2021.

And as we head toward that always-thrilling U20 showdown, it’s a great time to look back at 10 big Edmonton moments for international hockey fans.

Some of these moments occurred in international competition on Edmonton ice. Others featured IIHF stars making their mark in NHL play. All of them are burned into the brains of anyone who was fortunate enough to be in the building or watching on TV around the world.

1) Gretzky Makes His Canada Cup Debut (1981)

We’re talking about the greatest player of all time. It’s a no-brainer that nearly every time Wayne Gretzky wore an Edmonton jersey at Northlands Coliseum was a highlight. But did you know that the IIHF Centennial All-Star Team (2008) centre’s first game with the Canadian men’s national team also came at the historic barn at 7424 118 Avenue?

Playing on a superstar line with Gilbert Perreault and Guy Lafleur, Gretzky, 20, kicked off the 1981 Canada Cup with two goals and an assist in a 9-0 walloping of Finland. Finnish goalie Markus Mattsson, who faced 42 shots, had to wait until 1983-84 to secure some NHL revenge on “The Great One,” when he ended Gretzky’s league-record points streak at 51 games.

This tournament wouldn’t end well for Canada. Perreault broke his ankle against Czechoslovakia, and the Soviet Union broke Canadian hearts with an 8-1 final victory at the Montreal Forum. Still, this was an early taste of Gretzky’s international magic. He led his first Canada Cup in scoring, and he did it again when Canada triumphed in 1984, 1987, and 1991.

2) Host Nation Tops Sweden in Canada Cup Final (1984)

Out of the eight Canada Cups and World Cups of Hockey in history, the 1984 final is, objectively speaking, one of the least-heralded. Mike Bossy’s 3-2 semi-final overtime winner against the Soviets at the Calgary Saddledome is the stand-out memory.

Calgary also hosted Game One of the best-of-three final, and Sweden got its only lead of the series for 2:31 when Hakan Loob opened the scoring on the power play. After that, Canada powered to a 5-2 victory on Gretzky’s three-point night.

In Game Two in Edmonton, Swedish head coach Leif Boork surprisingly opted to start Bjorkloven’s Gote Walitalo over number one goalie Peter Lindmark. Walitalo allowed four goals in the first 7:13 of play, and even though Kent Nilsson’s two goals and two assists ignited a Swedish rally starting in the second period the final score was 6-5 Canada.

Tournament MVP John Tonelli of the New York Islanders, whose reign as four-time Stanley Cup champions had ended against Edmonton in May, notched a goal and an assist in the victory. Tonelli told reporters afterwards: “It certainly was a thrill for me to be cheered in Edmonton.”

“This team will never be together again, and to me, that is the only sadness here tonight,” Gretzky added. The bottom line was that Canada won its first major international tournament since 1976 and revitalized its claim to supremacy after the Soviets had triumphed at the ‘81 Canada Cup and the previous five IIHF World Championships.

3) Kurri Peaks in the Playoffs (1985)

Jari Kurri drew first blood on a Gretzky set-up in an 8-3 demolition of the Philadelphia Flyers in Game Five of the 1985 Stanley Cup finals on 30 May. That marked the climax of the single greatest Finnish season in NHL history. (With all due respect to Teemu Selanne’s 76-goal, 132-point rookie season with the Winnipeg Jets in 1992-93.)

Kurri’s goal was his 19th of the post-season, tying him with Reggie Leach of the Flyers (1976) for a single-playoff record that remains unbroken. The Helsinki-born trigger man won his second of five Stanley Cups with the Oilers that night at Northlands Coliseum. Kurri, 25, was coming off a 71-goal, 135-point regular season – still a Finnish NHL peak – and would win the Lady Byng Memorial Trophy as the league’s most gentlemanly player in June.

Gretzky said in his 1990 autobiography: “Someone once calculated that Jari had a hand in 630 of my 1,669 points in Edmonton. Without Jari, I’d still have been a good player, sure, but there’s no way I would have accomplished what I did.”

4) Iginla Drafted In His Hometown (1995)

2020 marks the 25th anniversary of the only NHL Draft ever held in Edmonton. And if NHL general managers had access to a time machine, many would look for a 1995 do-over.

The Dallas Stars, under then-GM Bob Gainey, chose Jarome Iginla 11th overall. It was a steal. This power forward from the Edmonton suburb of St. Alberta became the best skater picked in ‘95, totalling 625 NHL goals and 1,300 points in a 21-season Hall of Fame career. He was taken after Radek Dvorak (#10 to Florida) and before Teemu Riihijarvi (#12 to San Jose), with some 60 friends and family members on hand at the Coliseum.

Iginla, who’d just won a Memorial Cup with the WHL’s Kamloops Blazers at age 18, told the Edmonton Journal about his reaction: “When they said Dallas was picking, my mom said: `They talked to you, didn’t they?’ I said: ‘Mom, don't do that.’ I didn’t want to get my hopes up. Then they said, ‘From Kamloops ...’ I thought, ‘Wow!’ It was a nice surprise for me. Eleventh! I thought it would be nice just to get drafted. This is gravy.”

“Iggy” got dealt to the Calgary Flames along with Corey Millen in exchange for Joe Nieuwendyk that December. While it was a good trade for the Stars, who won their first Stanley Cup in 1999 with Nieuwendyk as playoff MVP, it was great for Calgary.

For IIHF fans, Iginla’s feats are legendary, including his 1996 World Junior gold medal, his 1997 World Championship gold medal, and (most famously) his 2002 and 2010 Olympic gold medals. He scored two goals and an assist in Canada’s 5-2 final triumph over the U.S. in Salt Lake City, and set up Sidney Crosby’s 3-2 overtime winner against the Americans in Vancouver.

5) Hemsky Eliminates Detroit (2006)

Did you realize that Ales Hemsky ranks eighth in all-time Oilers scoring? With 477 points for Edmonton, the Czech right wing sits eight points ahead of Connor McDavid. Although Hemsky sometimes took flak for not shooting enough, Edmonton fans will always cherish the great stickhandler’s two-goal performance in Game Six of the first round of the playoffs on 1 May 2006.

It was one of many ecstatic nights at Rexall Place that spring. The Detroit Red Wings had been favoured to win this series easily as the Presidents’ Trophy winner with 124 regular-season points to Edmonton’s 95. Heading into Game Six, the Oilers enjoyed a surprising 3-2 series edge. Yet the Wings looked poised to tie it up with a 3-0 lead after 40 minutes.

Fernando Pisani got Edmonton back into it with two early third-period goals, but the clock was ticking down. Then Hemsky worked his magic. First, the 22-year-old Pardubice star scored a video-reviewed power play goal at 16:07 to make it 3-3. With 1:06 left, Hemsky won the game on a slick give-and-go play with Sergei Samsonov. The stunning comeback not only set up a Cinderella run to the Stanley Cup final, but also ended the career of Detroit captain Steve Yzerman, who was battling injuries.

“I just told myself to stay with it,” Hemsky said. “It’s amazing, a great feeling.”

Hemsky, who later played for Ottawa, Dallas, and Montreal, would unfortunately fall prey to concussion problems. The 2005 IIHF World Championship gold medalist, who also owns Olympic bronze from 2006 and Worlds bronze from 2012, announced his retirement on 20 May 2020.

6) Smyth Takes a Bite Out of the Sharks (2006)

Ryan Smyth’s international reputation was already forged when the Oilers went on their 2006 run. “Captain Canada” owned an Olympic gold medal (2002), two Worlds golds (2003, 2004), and a World Junior gold (1995), plus a World Cup of Hockey title (2004).

Smyth, a 2020 IIHF Hall of Fame inductee, peaked production-wise in the ‘06 playoffs with a four-point night when Edmonton thumped the Sharks 6-3 in San Jose. But the winger’s grittiest achievement came four nights earlier at home.

Stud Edmonton defenceman Chris Pronger was suspended eight times in his NHL career, but the future Triple Gold Club member didn’t mean to knock out three of Smyth’s teeth with an errant clearing pass. It was a dentist’s dream and a hockey player’s nightmare.

However, the Banff native went to the dressing room for repairs and came back in the third. In triple overtime, Smyth’s attempted wraparound slid out front to Shawn Horcoff, who beat Sharks goalie Vesa Toskala for a thrilling 3-2 win.

7) Welcome to the Mrazek Show (2012)

When Edmonton co-hosted the 2012 World Juniors with Calgary, Canadian fans enjoyed watching their eventual bronze-medal team dominating preliminary-round opponents at Rexall Place with a 4-0 record and 26-5 goal difference. Yet the single most impressive performance in Group B arguably belonged to Czech netminder Petr Mrazek.

The Americans were heavy favourites in a 30 December 2011 matchup. They featured future NHLers like captain Jason Zucker, JT Miller, and Brandon Saad. They outshot coach Miroslav Prerost’s team 54-29, including a 21-10 gap in the third period. Yet Mrazek’s wild acrobatics, including a penalty-shot save on Josh Archibald, lifted the Czechs to a 5-2 victory. Petr Holik and Tomas Filippi added two goals apiece.

“I think this was the best game I played in my life,” Mrazek told IIHF.com. “We felt incredible here. Nobody thought we would play in the quarter-finals here, but we played like a team and we can go far.”

In the quarter-finals, the Czechs lost a 2-1 sudden-death heartbreaker to Russia. Still, the 19-year-old Ostrava native, who now plays for the Carolina Hurricanes, was named Best Goalie and a tournament all-star.

8) Hlinka Gretzky Cup Debuts in Alberta (2018)

The inaugural Hlinka Gretzky Cup gave Edmonton and Red Deer fans a wonderful chance to check out the world’s top U18 talent. The tournament has existed in various incarnations since 1991, but this was the first time it bore the surnames of both the late Czech legend Ivan Hlinka – a three-time world champion with Czechoslovakia in the 1970’s and the coach of the 1998 Olympic gold-medal team – and Wayne Gretzky.

In a sense, this was a dress rehearsal. The rosters featured many players expected to star at the 2021 World Juniors, including Russia’s Vasili Podkolzin, Sweden’s Hugo Alnefelt, and Canada’s Kirby Dach. The Canadians got lucky in the semi-finals with a 6-5 overtime win over the Americans. It appeared that time had run out when Dylan Cozens potted the regulation equalizer, but the goal was allowed to stand due to the absence of video review.

There wasn’t much luck involved in the final. After spotting Sweden a 2-0 first-period lead, Canada stormed back for a 6-2 win. Superstar Alexis Lafreniere led the way with two goals and an assist in front of a Rogers Place crowd of 10,000.

9) McDavid Runs Wild Versus Avs (2019)

Connor McDavid is off to a fast IIHF start with gold medals at the 2013 U18 Worlds, 2015 World Juniors, and 2016 World Championship. And the two-time NHL scoring champion won’t even be old enough to rent a car in the U.S. without paying extra fees when he turns 24 on January 13.

“McJesus” has torched opposing goalies more than once at Rogers Place, but his six-point outing against the Colorado Avalanche on 14 November 2019 marked a career high.

With three goals and three assists in that 6-2 win, the ultra-speedy centre arguably looked even better than when he scored four goals to help beat the Tampa Bay Lightning 6-2 in 2018.

If the 2017 Hart Trophy winner still has another gear to hit and is named to Canada’s 2022 Olympic roster, Beijing could be a very happy place for red Maple Leaf supporters.

10) Draisaitl Makes Scoring Title History (2020)

You could argue that it wasn’t surprising Leon Draisaitl won the Art Ross Trophy in 2020. After all, Edmonton’s hulking alternate captain had already become the first German to score 50 goals and top the 100-point plateau (50+56=106) in 2019.

On the other hand, if someone had told you 10 years ago that a German would lead the NHL with 110 points in a pandemic-shortened season, you might have exclaimed: “Yeah, right! That’s about as likely as Angela Merkel taking over as the new lead singer of Rammstein.” To this day, no player born and trained in Finland or Slovakia – both of which have produced more NHLers – has won the scoring race.

The 25-year-old son of three-time Olympian Petr Draisaitl, drafted third overall by Edmonton in 2014, has demonstrated that he’s an MVP with or without Connor McDavid by his side. Draisaitl also won the Hart and Ted Lindsay Trophies in September.