Throwback Thursday: A History of Oilers Games on Halloween

For the second time in two weeks, the Edmonton Oilers will play the Nashville Predators on a Thursday.

In this edition of Throwback Thursday, we looked at the game where Leon Draisaitl torched the Predators on March 2, 2020, scoring four goals against them. Since they are playing against the Predators again Instead, in two Thursdays, we’ll look at the Oilers’ record on Halloween.

The Oilers are in their 46th season since joining the National Hockey League. Funnily enough, they’ve only played 11 games against nine different opponents on Halloween, most recently in the 2015-16 season. In those 11 games, they are 5-4-2 and are outscoring their opponents by 40-30 points. One game, the first one we’ll look at, is a big reason why.

1981-82

Edmonton’s first Halloween game came in their third season when they faced the Quebec Nordiques at the Northlands Coliseum, with the Oilers defeating them 11-4 and increasing their season record to 9-4.

Wayne Gretzky was responsible for four of those goals, scoring his 10th, 11th, 12th and 13th goals of the season in the highest-scoring season of all time as the Great One finished with 92 goals. Also on the Oilers’ list of scorers were Matti Hagman (twice), Brett Callighen, Glenn Anderson and Jari Kurri (also twice).

It’s not Edmonton’s largest margin of victory, nor the most goals they’ve scored in a game (less than two months later, they won another game 11-4), but it was the most goals in a game they’d scored up until this one point in time.

1982-83

The Oilers suffered their first Halloween loss the following season when they lost 3-2 to the Vancouver Canucks. In this game, Wayne Gretzky and Mark Messier scored the goals. Richard Brodeur (no relation to Martin) got the win, but a fun fact about him is that he is the goalkeeper Wayne Gretzky has scored the most goals with, 29 goals.

Edmonton made it to the Stanley Cup Finals for the first time in 1983, but with that loss their season record improved to 4-6-3. The Oilers failed three times in the Stanley Cup Finals. Their first 13 games started with a 4-6-3 record, a 6-6-1 record in 2006 and a 2-9-1 record last season.

1986-87

Four years later, the Oilers got their revenge on the Canucks, defeating them 6-2 and increasing their season record to 6-2. At two different points in this game the Oilers trailed by one goal, but early in the third period with the score tied 2-2, the Oilers took control with Gretzky scoring two goals and Paul Coffey and Mark Messier scoring a goal each. That was Messier’s second goal of the game, while Mike Krushelnyski scored the other goal in the second period.

One of Vancouver’s goals was scored by Steve Tambellini, yes, the future general manager of the Oilers. Over the course of his ten-year career, he scored 160 goals and 310 points in 553 games, with the 1986-87 season being his penultimate season

Vancouver was one of two teams the Oilers played twice on Halloween, the other team having its first meeting with the Oilers the following season.

1987-88

The following season, the Oilers faced the New Jersey Devils and lost 6-5, leaving their season record at 6-5-0. But that’s okay because the Oilers won the Stanley Cup in 1988. At the start of the third period, Pat Verbeek scored a goal to make it 6-3 for the Devils. Despite goals from Mark Messier and Glenn Anderson in the final five minutes of the game, the Oilers failed to mount a comeback.

The two teams had a combined 111 penalty minutes, which sounds like a lot in this day and age, but isn’t even among the 86 games with the most penalty minutes in league history. Man, 1980s hockey was a whole different beast and I wish I could have experienced it.

1990-91

From a high-scoring game to a game that ended 1-0 in overtime, the Oilers fell to the original Winnipeg Jets 1-0 thanks to Pat Elynuik’s game-winning goal 23 seconds into overtime. After surprisingly winning the Stanley Cup just a few months earlier, the loss dropped the Oilers to 2-7-2.

This game was their fifth consecutive loss, but it wasn’t enough as they lost another four games, posting a season record of 2-11-2. Over the next 37 games, they posted a record of 25-10-2, increasing their record to 27-22-3. They made it to the postseason and even made it to the conference finals, where they lost in five games to the Minnesota North Stars.

1992-93

Two seasons later, the Oilers took on the Capitals and defeated them 4-2, making their season record 3-8-1. Craig Simpson, Brian Glynn, Esa Tikkanen and Josef Beránek, who was part of the Wayne Gretzky trading tree.

Bill Ranford received an assist in this game, the 13th assist of his career. Overall, the goalkeeper ranks 16th in the all-time points rankings at this position with his 24 assists. The 1992–93 season was also the first season in which the Oilers missed the playoffs since joining the National Hockey League.

1995-96

By the time Halloween 1995 rolled around, the dynasty was long gone and a new core moved in with the likes of Doug Weight, Jason Arnott, Todd Marchant and Miroslav Satan. The Oilers defeated the New Jersey Devils 2-1 in that game to bring their season record to 4-5-1.

This was also the second and final time the Oilers played an opponent they had already played on Halloween. As in the 1982 game against the Canucks, the opposing team had a goaltender with the last name Brodeur, with the Hall of Fame goaltender stopping 24 of 26 shots in that game.

1998-99

Three years later, the Oilers hosted the Mario Lemieux-less Pittsburgh Penguins, defeating them 4-1 and increasing their season record to 5-4-0.

Kevin Brown scored the first goal on a power play after the start of the game. Born in Birmingham, England, Brown is one of only 50 UK-born players to have played in the National Hockey League. In total he played 64 games, the 26th most. He is also one of only ten British-born players to have played in the NHL since the turn of the millennium.

Exactly one minute later, Boyd Devereaux scored the game-winning goal while outnumbered. Andrei Kovalenko scored his second goal of the season late in the second period, followed by a Penguins goal from Rob Brown (no relation, he is from Kingston, Ontario). Mike Grier scored late in the third period to give the Oilers a 4-1 win.

1999-00

The game against the St. Louis Blues was the final before the turn of the millennium. The Oilers lost 3-2 to the Blues after taking an early 2-0 lead. With the overtime loss, the Oilers moved to 2-2-2-2 this season. Doug Weight and Janne Niimimaa scored the goals for the Oilers in this game.

Funnily enough, a number of players in this game found jobs in hockey after their playing careers ended. For the Oilers, Dan Cleary serves as Detroit’s director of player development, Mike Grier serves as the San Jose Sharks’ general manager, Jason Smith is currently an assistant coach for the Lehigh Valley Phantoms, and Doug Weight was the former head coach of the Lehigh Valley Phantoms for the New York Islanders two seasons.

With the Blues, Marc Bergevin was general manager of the Montreal Canadiens and now serves as senior advisor to the general manager of the Los Angeles Kings, Craig Conroy is general manager of the Calgary Flames and Chris Pronger worked as an NHL player safety.

2009-10

The first Halloween game of the 21st century came in 2009, when the Oilers lost 2-0 to the Boston Bruins, increasing their season record to 7-6-1. It was the second time they were shut out on Halloween when they lost 1-0 to the Jets in 1990.

Both goals came before halftime of the third period, as Blake Wheeler scored his fourth goal of the season and Valdimír Sobotka scored his first goal of the season just over four minutes later. Daniel Paille received assists on both goals.

Before the 2009–10 season, the Oilers signed goaltender Nikolai Khabibulin (then 36 years old) as a replacement for Dwayne Roloson. The Russian goaltender had a solid season, posting a .909 save percentage in 18 games, but underwent season-ending back surgery in mid-January. His last season with the Oilers was 2012-13, he left on November 13, 2015 for eight years before returning to the Continental Hockey League as a 50-year-old to play for Torpedo Nizhny Novgorod. Unfortunately, he never played in a KHL game this season.