EDMONTON - Thousands of fans fuelled by a spectacular Oilers win filled Whyte Avenue after Monday night's game, crowd-surfing, flashing and chanting.
By 11 p.m., the 105th Street intersection was choked with noisy fans delirious that the Oilers beat the Detroit Red Wings 4-3 in Game 6 to win their first-round series 4-2.
One girl got on the shoulder of a friend and flashed the crowd several times as people took pictures with cellphones. Some fans tried to light a Calgary Flames flag with lighters in the middle of the intersection.
One driver stood on his black car, denting the top of it before police stepped in and the driver drove away.
Things got rowdy on one corner as a group of men knocked down a newspaper box and the back windshield of a police car was smashed. Another man rushed the street and flashed the crowd, yelling obscenities.
"This is much better than the Red Mile," said Janelle, 22, who was with the Calgary fans there Saturday night. "It's more packed."
"They were all in red but they didn't know anything about hockey."
By 11:15 p.m., when the police tactical team arrived, armed with tear gas, people chanted but were not confrontational.
Earlier in the evening, fans filled Rexall Place and got prepared for the most important game of the year to date.
Arthur Benoit carried around an aluminum foil Stanley Cup he'd made the night before. Another fan held a sign that read, "Better dead than any shade of red."
A city radio station displayed a Red Wings effigy inside a coffin, and fans donned cardboard helmets for the gritty battle ahead. A semi-truck decked out in Oilers flags drove up and down Wayne Gretzky Drive, its horn blaring and a red pickup in tow with "Roadkill" spray-painted on its doors.
Many fans believed that Game 6 would be the final one.
"There's no way it's going back to Detroit," predicted Benoit, 20.
"I said from the beginning when Detroit and Edmonton were going to hook up that we'll take it in six," gloated Kelly Halls, 36, who was part of a group that drowned out TSN's Ryan Rishaug at the scene of a live interview.
Fans on Whyte Avenue were anxiously glued to TVs after Ales Hemsky tucked in his second of the game. During the last faceoff, with five seconds to go, a man in Hudson's Tap House stood on a table, took off his shirt and starting chanting for the Oilers. As the clock hit zero, fans rejoiced -- dancing, hugging and splashing beer.
Honking drivers blanketed "Blue and Whyte Avenue" and fans lost their voices, all while police officers hovered on the sidewalk.
Now the Oilers look ahead to round two, which potentially means a renewed Battle of Alberta with Calgary, which lost to Anaheim 2-1 on Monday night to force Game 7 in Calgary on Wednesday.
Fans haven't had an Oilers-Flames matchup in the playoffs since 1991.
If it happens, "It'll rekindle all the bad blood in about two minutes," said Richard Fraser, 59, who attended the game with his son Jon.
Jon, 25, who is a student in Calgary, said he knows many people who have become Flames fans only in recent years.
"It's really going to create a rift in the province again just because people hate the Flames that much," he said.
Richard knows his son is a loyal Edmontonian, but he hopes younger fans will familiarize themselves with the intense rivalry between the two Alberta teams that became famous in the 1980s.
"It's very important that we instil the hatred all over again. It has to be inter-generational and we must pass it on," he said.
Mark Kreamer, 28, knows this even though he was just 15 years old the last time the two Alberta giants met. The difference since then, he said, is that Oilers fans have remained faithful despite some dismal seasons.
"Their jerseys still smell like Sport Chek," Kreamer said of Flames fans.
Hearing that, Gilda Edwards, 42, laughed and said beating the Flames is almost as important as winning the Stanley Cup. Almost.