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Edmonton Oilers

NHL, the National Hockey League is a premier professional North American Sports League played in indoor stadiums. It’s divided into two conferences, each comprising of three divisions of ice hockey teams. The league was established in 1917 in Montreal, Quebec and it is composed of 30 teams out of which 24 teams based in U.S. and 6 in Canada. They have a regular season and playoffs leading to the Stanley Cup, which is the NHL Championship final.

The Edmonton Oilers are a professional ice hockey team based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. They play in the National Hockey League (NHL). The Oilers are heading into the 2006-07 NHL season as the defending Western Conference Champions.

The Oilers made a name for themselves very early, making the Stanley Cup Playoffs in 1979-80, their first NHL season, but were defeated by the Philadelphia Flyers three-games-to-none. After a five-point improvement in the 1980-81 regular season, the Oilers stunned the hockey world by sweeping the heavily-favoured Montreal Canadiens in three games.

In the 1981-82 season, the Oilers became one of the league's strongest teams. Gretzky became the third NHL player to score 50 goals in 50 games. But youthful lapses of discipline led to a first round defeat at the hands of the Los Angeles Kings. In 1983 they made it to their first Stanley Cup Final, but were swept in four games by the three-time defending champions, the New York Islanders. A year later, however, Edmonton would defeat the Islanders in five games, four-to-one, to capture their first Stanley Cup.

Edmonton repeated Cup success in 1985 against the Philadelphia Flyers. However, their bid for a third straight championship came to an end in Game Seven of the 1985-86 Smythe Division Finals against the Calgary Flames. In 1987, Edmonton returned to the Stanley Cup Final and again defeated the Flyers in a tense seven-game series.

On November 22, 2003, the Oilers hosted the Heritage Classic, the first outdoor hockey game in the NHL's history. The Oilers were defeated by the Montreal Canadiens 4-3 in front of more than fifty-five thousand fans, an NHL attendance record, at Commonwealth Stadium in Edmonton. However in the 2006 playoff run, the Oilers would beat the sixth-seeded Mighty Ducks of Anaheim in five games, claiming the Clarence S. Campbell Bowl for a record seventh time.

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