Stacy Lorenz, a sport historian and professor in the physical education department at the University of Alberta’s Augustana Campus, said winning five Cups in seven seasons, as the Oilers did between the 1983-84 and 1989-90 seasons, presented Edmonton outside a Canadian context. He likened the fervent support here to that in a college town in the United States.

“There’s something unique about carrying that sense of the city out there into the world,” said Lorenz, 47, who teaches a course called “Hockey: Culture and Commerce.”

He added: “You get a sense that once you’re an Oiler, you’re always an Oiler — that alumni feeling. You have that shared history all the way back, and you will in the future and there’s no competition. It’s the only place for Edmonton on the North American stage, the only place where Edmonton is in the big leagues.”

It is a place where, the night the season ticket-holder Alec Card was born, his doctors — and parents — insisted on a television in the delivery room so all could watch the Oilers play the Boston Bruins in Game 4 of the 1988 Stanley Cup finals. And a place where, the morning after becoming a father to twins, goaltender Cam Talbot can walk into a Tim Horton’s and be congratulated. It is also a place where, later that night, the video screen at Rogers Place poses a multiple-choice question: What are the names of Talbot’s twins?

“As far as the hockey culture goes,” said Talbot, who joined Edmonton in a trade from the Rangers in June 2015, “it doesn’t get any better than this.”