Photos: Artwork celebrates Edmonton Oilers' advance to Stanley Cup Final – Edmonton | Globalnews.ca

Edmonton Oilers fans are honoring their support for the team and their joy at NHL playoff success in a variety of creative ways.

Some people wear Oilers jerseys, blue and orange wigs or tinsel or face paint to games or viewing parties.

Others celebrated their teams in an artistic way, creating stunning tributes and, in some cases, tracking their teams’ playoff progress.

Oilers Progressive Drawing

Phil Alain — Who is philalainartist on tiktok — is slowly painting a picture of Connor McDavid trying to achieve his goal of hoisting the Stanley Cup.

Before the start of the playoffs, he drew McDavid with his hands raised and returned empty-handed. After each round, Alan would add another trophy.

“I wait until the round is over before I start drawing the next part of the cup,” he explains. “I draw a quarter of the cup at the end of each round.”

Alan said he watched the game with his children and anxiously awaited the results.

“With every series, I think: I don’t want to stop painting… I really want it to be done now,” he said.

But he received some criticism online, and some Oilers fans said that Alan brought bad luck to the team, which made him a little upset.

“Maybe I’m making a mistake here. Maybe I shouldn’t be doing this,” Alan remembers thinking early on.

“I can't control the luck of the Oilers. So, I can only do what I have to do and have fun with it.”

Alan imitated Wayne Gretzky's pose of raising the Stanley Cup, and then adjusted it to this year's team situation. However, he still needed to make some modifications.

“I had to put his beard on because he had a beard.”

Alan wanted to get back into sports painting. He stopped making art after his wife died in 2019. The Oilers’ run to the playoffs inspired him to start again.

When the dust settles, Allan wants McDavid and the Oilers to be hoisting the trophy in real life. Then, he said, he'll add their names to his painting by signing it and auction it off to support the Amy's House.

Amy's Place is a temporary home for cancer patients in Edmonton. Alan founded the organization in his wife's honor after she died of cancer in 2019. She was only 38 years old at the time.

Oilers Cane

Brian Boser has been carving wood since 1996.

He recently designed a relief-style cane that pays tribute to Alberta veterans and the Oilers. Boeser’s father was a World War II veteran.

“In order to get people to pay attention to people with disabilities like us, we have to use different devices to help us,” he explained of his designs.

The cane took three weeks to carve. Boser used a machine smaller than the head of a pencil to create the 3D design.

Oilers “Fan Cave” mural

Muralist Ashley Rosenow usually paints creative patterns featuring mountains and flowers, but since Oilers playoff fever has gripped the city, she’s been getting more requests for hockey-themed paintings.

“I’ve actually had people contact me and ask if I could help them build the perfect fan cave,” she said.

Roseno placed the Oilers logo at the center of the explosion pattern, using blue, orange and white.

“I really wanted to capture the spirit of the Oilers,” she said. “It was all about my creative freedom … having a big explosion like this here is what I do as a muralist.”

Rosenow and her sister-in-law spent two days creating the mural, but that wasn’t all the work.

“Oh, of course, I’m a huge Oilers fan,” she said with a laugh.

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