EDMONTON – Cal Nichols, the Saskatchewan-born fuel retailer who assembled the local ownership group that bought the Edmonton Oilers in 1998 and kept the franchise from leaving the city, died Saturday. He was 84.
The Oilers confirmed his death in a tribute published Sunday on the club’s website. NHL.com reported the same day that Nichols died Sept. 12 at 84.
Nichols served as chairman and governor of the Edmonton Investors Group for a decade, a stretch that carried the Oilers from the brink of relocation to the sale that made Daryl Katz the club’s owner in 2008.
“It is difficult to imagine that the Oilers would still be in Edmonton if not for Cal Nichols,” NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said in a statement carried by NHL.com. “During the 1990s, Nichols stepped forward repeatedly to not only save the franchise from leaving the city that adores it, but to ensure its long-term stability and success.”
Bettman described Nichols as “a friend and trusted confidant on whom I could rely for wise counsel and for relentless effort on behalf of the franchise he loved.”
Nichols was a season ticket holder long before he was an owner, and his first intervention came from that side of the glass. In 1996, with the club’s finances deteriorating and relocation talk building, he co-chaired the Friends of the Oilers ticket drive. The Oilers say the campaign more than doubled the season ticket base to 13,000, enough to hold off a move.
The reprieve did not last. Owner Peter Pocklington put the team up for sale in 1997, and Nichols went looking for buyers among people he knew. He recruited 38 local investors to raise the $110 million purchase price, and according to the Oilers he committed $3 million of his own money, then another $2 million, to draw others in. The Edmonton Investors Group took control on May 5, 1998, when the down payment was made.
Kevin Lowe, the Hall of Fame defenceman who became Edmonton’s general manager in 2000 and worked closely with Nichols, told NHL.com on Sunday that the deal nearly collapsed.
“That’s what really needs to be remembered forever, is that he was the guy that put it all together and he was a dog on a bone,” Lowe said. “The thing almost didn’t get done because at the 11th hour they didn’t have the money, but it came together.”
Lowe drew a straight line from that summer to the present-day club. “The Oilers aren’t there, Rogers Place is not there, and Connor McDavid is not there. None of that happens without Cal’s leadership,” he said.
Katz made a similar assessment when he took over the team in June 2008, in a line the Oilers repeated in Sunday’s tribute: “If it wasn’t for Cal, the Oilers wouldn’t be in Edmonton.”
Nichols was born in Paradise Hill, Sask., in 1942 and captained his local baseball and hockey teams. He was running an Esso station in nearby St. Walburg at 19, selling gas to farmers on credit, and was elected a town councillor at 23. The town raised his number to the rafters of its arena in December 2002.
He moved to Edmonton in 1969 with his wife, Edna, and worked for Esso and Imperial Oil before helping found Northridge, a crude oil and natural gas marketing company that later became part of TransCanada Pipelines. He then started Gasland Oil, which grew into one of Western Canada’s largest service station chains.
Nichols was inducted into the Alberta Business Hall of Fame and received the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal, and in 2015 he was appointed to the Order of Canada. He later co-founded the Alberta Enterprise Group, a provincial business organization.
He is survived by Edna, his children Ken and Kristine, and five grandchildren.
The news reached Oil Country in the middle of the club’s busiest stretch of the off-season. Edmonton’s rookie camp opened Sept. 11 at Rogers Place, and the Oilers prospects were scheduled to face the Calgary Flames prospects on Monday at Scotiabank Saddledome. Main training camp opens Sept. 16 with medicals and fitness testing, and the Oilers begin the 2026-27 regular season Sept. 29 against the Vancouver Canucks at Rogers Place.
The Oilers noted that Nichols held his season seats until the end of his life.
Sources: NHL.com; Edmonton Oilers.
Photo: Rogers Place, Edmonton, by Urban Versis 32, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
