Kyle Sweezie pressure washes part of the 'Moss Pit' in Edmonton, Alta., on June 25. Fans could watch games at the outdoor viewing park throughout the Edmonton Oilers' playoff run.Megan Albu/The Globe and Mail
On a glum morning, under glum skies, Eddy Hernandez glumly scraped white and orange paint off the windows of a downtown Edmonton office tower.
“As you’re removing it, you’re feeling sad,” Hernandez said.
The paint previously read “LET’S GO OILERS.” Hernandez was working on removing an ‘E.’
“People are walking behind me, and they are telling me, ‘Ah, it’s so sad,’” he said. “Even a little girl was walking by saying that she was sorry.”
A couple blocks away, at the outdoor fan park known as the “Moss Pit,” Kyle Sweezie was using a pressure washer to clean away the stains and scourings of the previous night.
“I’m a little down,” Sweezie admitted. “A little down and out.”
The Oilers’ playoff run had dominated the city’s attention for weeks, garnering a level of emotion and involvement that reached a fever pitch in the lead-up to Game 7.
Barely 12 hours earlier, well more than 30,000 anxious fans had been gathered in and around Rogers Place in downtown Edmonton, leaving the remnants of their revelry and despair – and some bodily fluids – to be flushed away in the cold morning light.
“This was the dirtiest it was, out of all the days,” said Sweezie, who has been on the crew that maintains the area for five years, and worked cleanup throughout the playoff run. “Because they were upset, right? Just probably smashing stuff. It was really messy here. Well, you can see all the garbage.”
Devastated by Stanley Cup loss, Edmonton Oilers fans are still holding hope for team’s next act
A lineup of dumpsters brimmed with trash on the perimeter of the plaza, and frills of orange tinsel and shards of plastic cups shimmered in the drains on the ground. Seagulls swooped in to claim fries and pizza crusts. A poster for a Stanley Cup after-party slid along the cement in the breeze.
Tyler Cull and his nine-year-old son, Tanner, were still wearing their jerseys as they strolled through the plaza Tuesday morning, watching the crews at work, and reflecting on the roller coaster of emotion the previous days had wrought.
“I feel better, but I wish we would have won last night,” Tanner said. He was the first Oilers fan in his family, and had converted his parents and sister.
“I’m surprisingly down,” Tyler Cull said. “You walk around in your jersey, and people clearly acknowledge the loss with a look, sometimes a word. It’s a strange mood, a strange feeling. Definitely sombre.”
Cull got goosebumps as he recalled what it felt like when they flew in from B.C. before the game on Monday, how people on the airplane were happy and cheering, and the pilot even played an Oilers chant on the intercom.
“It was an amazing feeling,” Cull said. “And then you hit a brick wall.”
Sweezie, who was dressed in an Oilers T-shirt and ball cap, said there had been “a lot of mopey people” coming around on Tuesday morning. And while he thought the Oilers deserved to have won – because of how hard they worked, how they were down every series and came back – he still thought they did really well, considering.
“We only lost by one point,” he said.
And, he added: “There’s always next year.”