Edmonton Oilers Heritage Website

As the Edmonton Flyers and Calgary Stampeders faded in the early 1960s, Alberta was once again left without pro hockey. Albertans, therefore, turned to junior hockey to find hometown hockey heroes. With the Edmonton Oil Kings, delivering a pair of Memorial Cup victories in 1963 and 1966, Alberta was becoming a hotbed for great junior hockey. With enthusiasm high, the new Alberta Major Junior Hockey League was formed in 1963, and by the early 1970s AJHL teams were vying for a new major prize—the Centennial Cup.

The names from these great junior teams are now famous today. There were Oil Kings like Glen Sather and Jim Harrison, who later starred for the Alberta/Edmonton Oilers of the WHA; as well as the famous Sutter brothers, who helped build the Red Deer Rustlers into a Centennial Cup-winning juggernaut.

The NHL champions of today are created, in part, by the events in which they played. Such championships like the Centennial and Memorial Cups have produced stars that would later win bigger prizes. This section examines the great memories of this golden era of junior hockey, when teenagers became heroes to so many Albertans.