Cape Breton Oilers
Shop retro Cape Breton Oilers tees and hoodies. The Oilers drew upwards of 4,000 fans in Sydney, Nova Scotia, and won the Calder Cup in 1993 with Shaun Van Allen, Kirk Maltby and Scott Thornton in the lineup. Celebrate the highest level of hockey ever played on Cape Breton Island by browsing all of our Oilers gear, then read the team history below. We're an American small business bringing the logos and stories of long-lost hockey teams back.
3 products
Cape Breton Oilers History
The Cape Breton Oilers are the highest level hockey team to inhabit Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia. They were originally the Nova Scotia Oilers, playing out of the Halifax Metro Centre from 1984-88. The team moved to Sydney, Nova Scotia, for the 1988-89 season and were a hit, attracting upwards of 4,000 fans in a city that has a population of only 30,000 today.ย
The Cape Breton Oilers spent eight seasons in Sydney, with the high water mark being a Calder Cup win in 1993. Interestingly, that team didn't even feature a ton of future NHL stars. They were led in scoring by Dan Currie and Bill McDougall, who combined for less than 50 NHL games. The team still did have big league talent though, as Shaun Van Allen, Kirk Maltby, and Scott Thornton played significant time for Cape Breton that year.ย
By the mid-90s, the excitement waned a bit in Sydney, as a casino opened nearby and the Canadian economy as a whole was struggling (this is around the time Winnipeg moved to Phoenix). Those were the reasons given when the team relocated to Hamilton and became the Hamilton Bulldogs in 1996, but in reality, a new state of the art arena in a city the size of Hamilton was probably a large part of the appeal to move the team.ย
