Edmonton Oil Kings

The Edmonton Oil Kings are a major junior ice hockey team based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada that play in the Western Hockey League. As of July 2008, they are owned by Daryl Katz's Oilers Entertainment Group, who also own the Edmonton Oilers. The 2007–08 season was the newest incarnation of the Oil Kings' inaugural season in the Western Hockey League. To date NHL alumni are Tomas Vincour, Mark Pysyk, Curtis Lazar, Keegan Lowe, Griffin Reinhart, Henrik Samuelsson, Laurent Brossoit, and David Musil. As the 2012 WHL champions, the Oil Kings played in the 2012 Memorial Cup, losing 6-1 against the eventual winning team, the Shawinigan Cataractes, in the playoff tie-breaker. The Oil Kings won the 2014 Memorial Cup, defeating the Guelph Storm in the 2014 Memorial Cup final game.

Franchise history

The newest incarnation of the Oil Kings are the fourth WHL team to play in Edmonton, preceded by the first Edmonton Oil Kings (1951–76), the second Oil Kings (1978–79) and the Edmonton Ice (1996–98).

Edmonton Oil Kings (WCHL)

The Edmonton Oil Kings were a junior ice hockey team, and founding member of the Western Hockey League. They played at the Edmonton Gardens in Edmonton, Alberta, and later the Northlands Coliseum. In 1976 they moved to Portland, Oregon to become the Portland Winter Hawks. A second incarnation of the team played only one season in 1977–78 before moving to Great Falls, Montana.

Franchise history

The Edmonton Oil Kings have a history that predates the founding of the Western Hockey League. They won the Memorial Cup in 1963 and 1966 as members of the senior men's Central Alberta Hockey League. The team was required to defeat the Alberta Junior Hockey League champion to earn the right to play for the national junior championship. They were also cup finalists seven different years between 1954 and 1971.

In 1966, Bill Hunter, the team's General Manager, was concerned about the state of junior hockey in western Canada. Each of the west's four provinces all had their own junior league, and Hunter felt that this put them at a disadvantage when competing nationally against the powerful leagues in Ontario and Quebec. Hunter hoped to form a unified western league to compete.

Edmonton

Edmonton ⁱ/ˈɛdməntən/ is the capital of the Canadian province of Alberta. Edmonton is on the North Saskatchewan River and is the centre of the Edmonton Capital Region, which is surrounded by Alberta's central region.

The city had a population of 877,926 in the 2014 census, making it Alberta's second-largest city and Canada's fifth-largest municipality. This population represents 66 percent of the total 2014 population of 1,328,300 within the Edmonton census metropolitan area (CMA), Canada's fifth-largest CMA by population. Edmonton is the northernmost North American city with a metropolitan population over one million. A resident of Edmonton is known as an Edmontonian.

Edmonton's historic growth has been facilitated through the absorption of five adjacent urban municipalities (Strathcona, North Edmonton, West Edmonton, Beverly and Jasper Place) and a series of annexations ending in 1982. Edmonton serves as the northern anchor of the Calgary–Edmonton Corridor. Known as the "Gateway to the North", the city is a staging point for large-scale oil sands projects occurring in northern Alberta and large-scale diamond mining operations in the Northwest Territories.

Edmonton (disambiguation)

Edmonton is the capital city of the Canadian province Alberta. It may also refer to:

Cities and towns

Electoral districts

Edmonton (Via Rail station)

Edmonton railway station is on the Canadian National Railway mainline in Edmonton, Alberta. The railway station is located near the Edmonton City Centre Airport, approximately 5.5 kilometres from the city centre. Served by Via Rail's The Canadian three times per week in each direction, the station is unusually located on a branch of the main line, meaning that trains must either reverse into or out. The station opened in 1998 following the closure of the downtown Via Rail station which was located in the lower level of Edmonton's CN Tower.

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