‘Pink Pony Club' or bust: Edmonton Oilers desperate to play Chappell Roan's hit song again as Canada's Stanley Cup drought looms

CNN

4 hours ago

One of the most infamous sporting dry spells is on the verge of extending for yet another season. The 30-plus-year streak no one wants in Canada looms ahead of Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Final.
With a win over the Edmonton Oilers Tuesday night, the Florida Panthers would earn back-to-back NHL titles and inflict (again) more postseason misery on Canadians in an event they believe should be dominated by their teams. An away defeat would seal another Stanley Cup summer tour, awarded to the last team standing in the NHL playoffs, hosted south of Canada's border.
Canadians are credited with inventing the game of hockey and have more players in the NHL than any other country. The Hockey Hall of Fame is in Toronto and even features a special, refurbished bank vault that houses the sport's holy grail and Canada's most cherished chalice - the original Stanley Cup trophy. The sport itself is integral to national pride.
A post shared by CNN Sports (@cnnsport) And yet it's been 32 years since a team from the Great North has lifted Lord Stanley's trophy above their shoulders in jubilation.
'It's a little embarrassing for Canadians that, although we have Canadian players playing on American teams that win the Stanley Cup every year, not having the Stanley Cup in this country since 1993,' the six-time Cup winner (five with the Oilers) Kevin Lowe, told CNN.
'It's wearing on the country, and I think the other fans from other teams in Canada are, for the first time ever, maybe cheering for the one Canadian team to hopefully bring the Cup back to Canada.'
Down three games to two in the series isn't insurmountable – plus, Oil Country has seen their franchise rally before in the Final. Just a year ago, the team was down 0-3 to the Panthers and went on to win three consecutive games to force a Game 7. The northernmost team in the NHL came agonizingly close to recapturing the glory and breaking the Cup-less streak, losing that decisive game 2-1.
Edmonton has won the Cup five times, with the last time coming in 1990, and would certainly welcome the Toronto Maple Leafs, Vancouver Canucks, Montreal Canadiens, Winnipeg Jets, Ottawa Senators, and, yes, even bitter rivals Calgary Flames fans – along with their own faithful – rejoicing an Oilers title. Well, maybe not Flames fans.
If there is one Oilers player who will most likely deliver the Cup 'home,' it's the man from Richmond Hill, Ontario.
The Oilers' generational talent – Connor McDavid, the five-time scoring champ and three-time Hart trophy winner (MVP) – is the face of Canadian sports and one of the most well-known athletes in North America. When a video emerged of him sobbing in his locker room stall after coming agonizingly close to winning the title a year ago, his entire native nation commiserated with his pain.
But the stage never feels too big for the league's fastest skater and one of its most prolific scorers – even now with the Oilers needing to win Tuesday night in Florida just for a chance at a Game 7 on Friday to exact revenge and achieve legendary Cup status.
'There's a big circus. You can feel like it's larger than it is,' he said ahead of the Final clash with Florida.
'At the end of the day, it's another series and we're playing another great team, and you've got to beat them before anything else happens. So, they have our complete focus. All of our energy is going into beating the Florida Panthers. There should be nothing else on anyone's mind.'
McDavid, who has tallied six assists, scored his first goal of the series in Saturday's Game 5 loss.
TNT Sports analyst Eddie Olczyk, an American who won the Cup with the Rangers in 1994, believes this is the year the streak comes to an end because McDavid is the ultimate X-factor, especially with a point to prove after last season's outcome.
'Honestly, I get the same feeling that I get when I watch Patrick Mahomes down in a football game – time coming down, he has the ball, you just know he's gonna score,' comparing McDavid with the Chiefs' three-time Super Bowl champion.
'I got that same feeling when Michael (Jordan) would get the ball that everything was gonna be OK, and the Bulls were gonna win. Playing against (Wayne) Gretz(ky), you just knew that it didn't matter what the situation or what the score was,' he said.
'And I just feel that when I watch Connor. Just something, you know, something great is gonna happen.'
The 28-year-old is one of 20 Canadians on the Oilers roster. Should they orchestrate the end of the Cup-less streak, to say those players would be hailed as heroes by the entire country would be an understatement.
'I really believe the Oilers are gonna win this series. I really believe it's their destiny,' Lowe told CNN before the series began.
One of Lowe's former teammates is the player McDavid is often compared to and widely considered the best hockey player of all time, Wayne Gretzky. 'The Great One' holds league records for most career points (2,857) and most assists (1,963) and believes his protégé is just the man to solve the drought.
'There's no question he's the best player in hockey. He's an unselfish young man. He loves playing in Edmonton. He loves being the captain of the Oilers. He wants desperately to win a Stanley Cup. That's all he wants,' Gretzky said while appearing on 'The Pat McAfee Show.'
As for McDavid and the Oilers' chances to finally become the first Canadian franchise to win the Cup in decades?
'This is the team to do it,' Gretzky said at the start of the Final.
In 1993, the top-grossing movie in the US featured genetically reproduced reptiles, 'Jurassic Park,' with the number one song that year belonging to Whitney Houston's spectacular 'I Will Always Love You.' It's doubtful that either hit inspired Montreal, but it was that team, led by Guy Carbonneau, who defeated a Los Angeles Kings team, led by Gretzky, in five games.
From 1984 through 1990, seven straight Stanley Cups were clinched by teams from Canada. The running faucet of titles came to a screeching halt after the Habs won 32 years ago.
There have been seven previous attempts in the Final to break the streak.
A post shared by CNN Sports (@cnnsport) Montreal had a championship chance in 2021 but lost to the Tampa Bay Lightning. The Oilers lost in 2006 and last season. The Canucks had two cracks at the 'curse' but came up short against the New York Rangers in 1994 and to the Boston Bruins in 2011 – after which riots broke out in downtown Vancouver. The Senators were on the brink of celebrating a Stanley Cup victory but lost to the Anaheim Ducks in 2007. Finally, the Flames, Edmonton's nemesis, succumbed to the Lightning in 2004 in a brutal double-overtime loss in Game 7.
Many have pointed to the economic disparity between the strength of the American dollar and the Canadian dollar over the decades as the reason why teams based in the US have, on and off the ice, taken advantage of getting more for their money in terms of player salaries, training facilities, and personnel. Recently, teams like the reigning champs can woo players with Florida's low tax burden (and an off-ice lifestyle that could certainly include daily sunscreen and flip-flop use).
NHL commissioner Gary Bettman pushed back on whether or not teams based in the US, specifically in Florida, had an advantage based on tax breaks, calling it a 'ridiculous issue' while appearing on TNT ahead of Game 3 of the Final.
'When the Florida teams weren't good, which was for about 17 years, nobody said anything about it,' he said. 'For those of you who played, were you sitting there with a tax table? No. You wanted to go to a good organization in a place you wanted to live, where you wanted to raise your kids and send them to school. You wanted to play in a first-class arena with a first-class training facility with an owner, an organization, a GM and a coach that you were comfortable with. And you wanted to have good teammates so you'd have a shot at winning.'
Bettman added, 'Could it be a little bit of a factor if everything else were equal? I suppose, but that's not it. By the way, state taxes are high in Los Angeles and New York. What are we going to do, subsidize those teams?'
Gretzky said his attitude as a young player was to relish an environment that promoted the culture of the game and provided the best chance to win it all.
'Obviously, Florida and Tampa Bay is a unique situation, (so is) Dallas, Vegas, from a financial point of view. If that's what a player's thinking about. But if a player's thinking, 'You know what, I want to play in a hockey culture.' Playing and living in the city of Edmonton. I loved it for 10 years,' he told Pat McAfee.
'It's a different feeling when you leave the arena in Florida after a game or leave the arena in Tampa. When you leave the arena in Edmonton, you know you've been in a hockey game and you know there's 1.5 million people who live here and 1.3 million have watched that game and the other 200K, the only reason they didn't, is because they were working. So, it's what you want to do as a player and how you wanna approach this. 'Do I want to go to where everything is hockey? Or do I want to go to a place where, financially, it might be a little bit better for me?'
Then there is the straight math of it all.
There are only seven NHL teams that reside north of the border, while 25 franchises call the States home. Not helping the percentages for Canada is the fact that the Quebec Nordiques relocated out of the country in 1995 to become the Colorado Avalanche. And like a sick joke from south of the border, the Avs would go on to win three titles.
Despite it all, hope remains up north.
'I know my friends and family back up in Toronto – they're Leaf fans first,' TNT Sports' Anson Carter, a Canadian who played for eight NHL teams including the Oilers, said ahead of Game 1.
'But they're hoping to see the Cup come back to Canada. So, it's bigger than just Edmonton playing. I think the whole country is rallying behind Edmonton being Canada's team.'
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney isn't shy about his passion for not only his country but for his favorite hockey team – the Oilers.
He was raised in Edmonton and served as a backup goaltender while attending Harvard University. During his campaign, he took part in a morning skate with his beloved team, wearing a No. 24 Oilers home jersey and shooting pucks on net with players. He has held onto Cup faith, too. 'We are going to win, baby!' he said back in March.
In an interesting twist to the chase for a Cup, the Oilers have turned to an American-born singer-songwriter to inspire the team.
Chappell Roan released the single 'Pink Pony Club,' a song inspired by her first trip to the Abbey, a famous gay bar in Los Angeles, in 2020, with her 2025 rendition at this year's Grammys sending the Missouri-born star's popularity into the proverbial stratosphere.
The team has chosen the banger as a post-win anthem that blasts the team's locker room after defeating opponents.
Oilers defenseman Mattias Ekholm wasn't familiar with Roan's game ahead of the tradition but certainly is now.
'I think it's great. I haven't heard this song before, I'll be honest, but I think it's great. It's catchy and it gets the mood going,' Ekholm told TNT Sports after the Game 1 OT win.
Ekholm's acknowledgment of the superstitious ritual was a bit of a surprise, as the team had been trying to keep the track's importance on the down low.
During a Western Conference Final news conference, a reporter asked Oilers players Evan Bouchard and Trent Frederic about the origin of the song's use. Bouchard and Frederic sheepishly looked at each other while smiling with Bouchard, who was born in Ontario, replying, 'We are going to keep that one with the team.'
When asked about the origins of the song becoming a rallying cry in the dressing room, Oilers goalie Calvin Pickard wouldn't divulge details. 'I know exactly where it started, but I don't know if I want to let that secret out,' he told the Edmonton Sun.
'I know exactly when, because I was there. But, I think I am going to keep it tight to the chest.'
Gretzky was surprised by the choice when the victory track was revealed to him after the Oilers' OT winner in Game 1 but quickly chose to get on board with the dance hit – especially if the Oilers could use the award-winning song to deliver the Cup back north.
'I gotta get that as my ringtone,' he said.
Oilers players will want nothing more than to break out the aux cord and blast 'Pink Pony Club' again after a series-tying win Tuesday. The victory would ignite hope for another chance to overcome the daunting drought and instill the belief that the Cup could finally return to Canada.