Davis: My dad was a longtime Oilers scout who earned his Stanley Cup rings (2024)

I have an Edmonton Oilers Stanley Cup ring.

I didn’t buy or steal it. Nor did I earn it, the way superstars Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl and their Oilers teammates are trying to win this year’s Stanley Cup. They’re trying their best, but the Florida Panthers are taking a formidable 2-0 lead into the resumption of the NHL’s best-of-seven championship series Thursday night in Edmonton.

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In no way am I trying to belittle McDavid, Draisaitl and their teammates. I admire their talents and understand it’s not easy to win a Stanley Cup, especially when facing the team that lost last year’s final and features the world’s best goalie in Sergei Bobrovsky.

The Oilers won five Stanley Cups between 1984 and 1990. My dad, Lorne Davis, was a scout with the Oilers from 1980-2007. After a lengthy playing career that included lots of games in the minors and short stints with four of the “Original Six” teams, he spent 40 years scouting for the NHL’s St. Louis Blues and New York Rangers, the WHA’s Houston Aeros and — for his final 27 years — the Oilers.

By travelling the world to scout prospective players, he earned and received a ring for each championship. He was accepted and appreciated so much by the players that they hauled him onto the ice for a celebratory group picture following one of the championships. I can see it on YouTube, in colour, unlike the grainy, black-and-white goal he scored during the 1953 Stanley Cup final while helping the Montreal Canadiens defeat the Boston Bruins.

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This particular ring is 40 years old, commemorating the Oilers’ first NHL championship in 1984.

The Oilers had lost the 1983 Cup to the four-time champion New York Islanders. Following the final of the four-game sweep, according to an oft-told story by Oilers star Wayne Gretzky, the losing players walked by the victors’ locker room expecting to see joyful celebrations. Instead, the Islanders appeared to be a battered and exhausted group. That lesson, according to Gretzky, showed the Oilers what it took to become champions.

In 1984, they beat the Islanders in five games and earned their first rings.

This ring has “DAVIS” inscribed on one side above an Oilers logo. There’s also, strangely enough, a carrot with a bite out of it, a humourous reference to the “carrots” that Oilers owner Peter Pocklington and head coach/general manager Glen Sather would dangle in front of the players, a group that included future Hall of Famers Gretzky, Mark Messier, Glenn Anderson, Jari Kurri, Paul Coffey, Grant Fuhr and Kevin Lowe.

Gretzky invited my parents to his wedding. Lorne convinced the Oilers brass to draft Fuhr eighth overall in 1981. Messier gave him a signed plaque when the former captain had his Number 11 retired. Anderson taught at my dad’s hockey school and spent a summer boarding at our family home. Lowe, after becoming the Oilers general manager, summoned all the team’s scouts and brought a planeload of people to Lorne’s funeral in Regina.

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He really was a part of the Oilers dynasty, sharing credit with head scout Barry Fraser for helping build one of the greatest hockey teams of all time. But they were more than a collection of Hall of Famers. Their initial victory could also be attributed to role players like Dave Hunter, Dave sem*nko, Kevin McClelland, Dave Lumley, Charlie Huddy and Lee Fogolin. This year’s Oilers could likely use some players like that.

Lorne got his name engraved on the trophy a couple times, as he did for winning in 1953 as a player. Along with an Olympic pendant from coaching Canada’s 1980 Olympic hockey team, he had enough championship jewelry to endow each of his children and grandchildren with a bauble.

He would have been one short if the Canadiens hadn’t realized that their early championship squads didn’t receive rings, so in 2003 they honoured the 50th-anniversary of the 1953 victory by distributing brand-new rings. The winning players in 1953 initially received tie tacks, with the team’s bleu-blanc-rouge “C-H” logo emblazoned in emerald, diamond, and ruby chips.

My mom took the tie tack to a jeweller and had it made into a ring. When dad handed the pendant and rings to his kids and grandkids one Christmas morning, we knew what it took. We cried.

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