Quote:
Originally Posted by CliffFletcher
I pity Flames fans who weren't around to enjoy the Battle of Alberta. When Calgary and Edmonton were the two best teams in the league, and every game between the two - including the eight regular season meetings a year - had the manic intensity of game 7 of a playoff series.
The ferocious rivalry of that era is the main reason I'm a Flames fan in the first place. The fact the two teams haven't met in the playoffs since 1991 is a tragedy. As Friedman commented in the post-game show, the league is better when there's hate between teams. And that hate is so much better when it's the hate between two excellent teams who stand in one another's way of advancing in the playoffs.
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There's always hate between good teams that are rivals, not sure what Friedman is getting at. It's not like this is exclusive to the BoA, it's just dependent on two rivals being good at the same time. The Flames and Oilers have been mostly mediocre to bad for the last 25 years, only occasionally taking turns being 'good', that's why their particular rivalry is not what it used to be. I don't think it matters for hockey overall if the BoA is good or not, there's always plenty of good teams that hate each other. Maybe not to the same degree as 80's BoA but the majority of NHL fans don't care about that as Flames and Oilers fans combined probably make up 1-5% of the NHL's fans.