Today, on the 3rd day of 2021, I’ve got three historic Edmonton Oilers clips for you to watch. Trust me, you’re going to dig these!
The first one should be familiar to most of the club’s vintage fans. It features a very young Wayne Gretzky facing his first bit of adversity in the NHL in a game on January 3rd, 1981.
Hint: You never go East-to-West at the opposition’s blueline with your head down…
The fella that hammered The Great One in that clip was named Bill McCreary, right? I always that it was the official of the same name, but as things turn out, they’re cousins! I guess that family’s not much into originality when it comes to naming the kinder.
Now, there’s some speculation that Gretzky deserved that hit thanks to him attempting to slew foot Maple Leafs forward Laurie Boschman earlier in the game. A move that went unpenalized and also started a bit of a fracas. I’ll let you be the judge of that and if you’re more familiar with this game, please let us know what the real story is in the comments below!
The next three clips are from a real epic battle between the Oilers and the Dallas Stars on the evening of January 3rd, 2009.
What you’re about to watch is three real old-school scraps featuring Jason Strudwick, Zack Stortini, and “Pancakes” Penner.
I can’t remember the last time we saw three separate fights in an Oilers game. I mean, that one massive Battle of Alberta game last season had three at one time (Tkachuk/Bear, Smith/Talbot, Lindholm/Chiasson).
What jumped out at me in a couple of those scraps was Barch’s ability to go the distance in both of those scraps above. His arms must’ve felt like a couple of soggy pieces of spaghetti that night. He took on a couple of real heavyweights and didn’t even stop to think about it and how strong was Dustin Penner before he went insane? He flipped Landon Wilson over like he was a Sunday morning flapjack…
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