Sports history is full of underdog champions. Very few of them won a title without a building to call home. The 1984 Tulsa Oilers, who played the 1983-84 season, did exactly that. Their owners went broke in the middle of the season, they lost their arena, they finished the year living out of a hotel in Denver — and then they swept the final for the Central Hockey League championship. Here is the story of one of the strangest title runs in minor-league hockey.
The 1983-84 Oilers at a glance
- League: Central Hockey League (its final season)
- Coach: Tom Webster
- Regular season: 36-27-5, second of five teams
- Playoffs: beat Salt Lake in the semifinal, swept Indianapolis 4-0 in the final
- Notable players: John Vanbiesbrouck, George McPhee, Dave Barr, Grant Ledyard, Bill Baker, Robbie Ftorek
A league running out of road
By the early 1980s, the original Central Hockey League was shrinking. In 1983-84 it had only five teams: the Colorado Flames, the Indianapolis Checkers, the Montana Magic, the Salt Lake Golden Eagles and the Oilers. The Oilers had moved that season from the Tulsa Assembly Center to the Expo Square Pavilion at the Tulsa County Fairgrounds, and they were affiliated with the New York Rangers, which brought several talented young players to Oklahoma.
February 1984: the bottom falls out
On February 16, 1984, the team’s owners went bankrupt. The Oilers went into receivership, and with the money gone, the lease on the Fairgrounds Pavilion was gone too. Folding the team would have left the rest of the league with a lopsided schedule, so the other clubs helped pay to keep the Oilers alive and the league took control of the team.
There was one big catch: Tulsa no longer had anywhere to play. For the final six weeks of the regular season, every game was a road game.
Life in a Denver hotel
The team relocated to Denver, where players lived in a hotel and practiced at the University of Denver. When that ice was not available, they sometimes practiced at a shopping-mall rink. According to The Hockey News, the mall did not allow pucks — so the players practiced with Nerf balls.
It would have been easy for the season to fall apart. Instead, coach Tom Webster turned it into a rallying cry. His message, as he later recalled, was that the team set out to prove you did not need a home rink to win a championship.
Built on goaltending
The 1983-84 Oilers were not an offensive powerhouse. They scored fewer goals than any team in the league, but they also allowed the fewest. The reason was in net: John Vanbiesbrouck, a young goaltender in the Rangers system, was named the league’s most valuable player and won the Terry Sawchuk Award for top goaltending. Two seasons later he won the Vezina Trophy as the NHL’s best goaltender.
Up front, Dave Barr and George McPhee drove the offense. McPhee later became one of the NHL’s most respected executives; our list of famous Tulsa Oilers alumni covers his path and other notable names. Veteran Robbie Ftorek, a future NHL head coach, added experience, and the blue line included Olympian Bill Baker from the 1980 Miracle on Ice team and Grant Ledyard.
The playoff run
Tulsa finished second in the regular season with a 36-27-5 record. In the semifinals, the Oilers beat the Salt Lake Golden Eagles in five games.
The final against the Indianapolis Checkers was the perfect ending to a homeless season. With no rink of their own, the Oilers played all four games in Indianapolis — and won all four. Grant Ledyard was named MVP of the final series, and Tulsa had its third Adams Cup.
The aftermath
The championship was also a goodbye. The Central Hockey League shut down after the 1983-84 season, and Tulsa went without professional hockey until a new CHL was formed in 1992. In a sense, the road warriors of 1984 kept the Oilers’ story alive long enough for the next chapter to begin. You can read about that revival — and how the franchise reached 75 seasons — in our history of hockey in Tulsa.
Why it still matters
Every franchise has a story it tells to explain who it is. For the Oilers, 1984 is a good one: a team that lost almost everything except the will to keep playing, and won anyway. Forty-plus years later, it remains one of the most remarkable championships in the history of minor-league hockey.
Sources include contemporary league records, The Hockey News’ retrospective on the 1983-84 Oilers and the compiled records of the 1964-1984 Oilers.
