EDMONTON, AB – The Edmonton Oilers rolled into Madison Square Garden for a regular-season road meeting against the New York Rangers on March 17, 1993.
The Blue & Orange left Broadway with the two points after winning 4-3 in overtime off Craig MacTavish’s winner 33 seconds into the extra period, but Doug Weight’s recollections of the game are a bit cloudier after he woke up that morning a Ranger before finding himself in the Oilers locker room later that afternoon.
The 22-year-old was acquired by the Oilers for Esa Tikkanen in a pre-game trade where both players then had to swap locker rooms and jerseys before taking to the ice, which led to a bemused discovery by his wife Allison upon her arrival at the venue later that night.
Cell phones weren't advanced enough to be in everyone's pockets at that time.
“We were in New York. He got traded at lunchtime,” teammate Kelly Buchberger recalled. “So he switched, and the story is that Allison – his girlfriend and now wife – came to the game and there were no phones then. She's at the plexiglass in the Rangers end and she's looking for Dougie and he's not there, but she knocks on the glass and he's wearing an Oilers jersey.”
As a player who was drafted by the Blueshirts, it was an eye-opening experience for Weight to have to quickly adjust to his new team after envisioning himself as a Ranger for the rest of his career.
But as for what followed, Weight and all of Oil Country wouldn’t have traded it for anything.
“I was hurt, scared and didn't know what to expect,” he said. “I didn't know a lot of people on the team at all, and I changed rooms and played. That was another time that I didn't really feel myself. I think we won in overtime. Mac-T scored and we beat the Rangers, and I have no recollection of the game. All of a sudden you're on a plane going to a different city, and it was scary.”
“But two weeks after I got here, I was like, ‘what a great group of guys we have’,” Weight said.
“You realize how special it was, and it didn't take me long.”