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Meet the unofficial cartoonists of the Edmonton Oilers

Preston Hodgkinson
Preston Hodgkinson
|
Jan 30 2024, 5:33 pm
Meet the unofficial cartoonists of the Edmonton Oilers
@WendolynLamchop/X | @LanceMaxwell2/X

It wouldn’t shock anybody to see the Edmonton Oilers fan base ranked among the most passionate in the entire NHL.

Despite being smaller than Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, and Calgary, Edmonton has a  fan base that can fight right alongside them regarding how much they adore and support their hockey team.

Even after a horrible stretch of hockey between 2007-2016, the fan base is still as engaged as ever, with stars like Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl rivalling what those legendary 1980s Oilers teams bolstered.

All that patience seems to be paying off as the Oilers are among the hottest teams in the NHL right now, riding a 16-game winning streak, which is just one short of tying the league record.

It’s a fun time to be an Oilers fan, and even better for two specific fans who have dedicated thousands of hours creating hand-drawn comics and cartoons that do everything from recapping games to capturing inside jokes among the fan base.

These are the stories behind the unofficial cartoonists of the Oilers.

Oilers-cartoonists

@WendolynLamchop/X | @LanceMaxwell2/X

Wendy Lam, 41, became a fan of the Oilers back in the post-glory years of the team in the 1990s. Her family wasn’t particularly into sports but the love of the game rubbed off on her from her cousins, who were big fans of the Oilers.

“I only started cheering for them when they were not that great,” laughed Lam. “Had to learn the rules by myself because most of my family didn’t watch hockey.”

A freelance artist by trade, the thought of combining her love of drawing with her Oilers fandom never really crossed Lam’s mind. That all changed after she posted an Oilers doodle onto the popular hockey forum HFBoards in 2019.

“I did a little doodle at the time when [Leon] Draisaitl, [Ryan] Nugent-Hopkins, and [Kailer] Yamamoto were a really good line,” Lam told Daily Hive. “Someone saw it and posted it on his Twitter, which my cousin followed, sent it to me and I was like, ‘Oh, I’ll bring my old Twitter account back to life.'”

With her drawings getting more and more popular, Lam went to work creating more comics for fans to enjoy. Eventually, she turned these creations into stickers and launched a small business selling the doodles to fans.

Things got so popular that she was able to see one of her stickers on the visiting bench at Rogers Place during an Oilers playoff game in 2022. It was a moment that she never could have imagined happening just a few years prior.

“I saw the Draisaitl one during the game, I was talking to my sister on the phone at the time and I had to stop talking to her cause I was like, ‘What the heck, is that my sticker?'” said Lam. “My phone blew up with notifications and texts from friends.”

Lam is still creating doodles and stickers of the Oilers. Her X account (@WendolynLamchop) is very active as she continuously shares new comics every game day and lets her fans see some of the new stickers she’s working on.

To see all the stuff she’s working on you can check out her Redbubble store.

“I did not expect something like this to happen,” said Lam. “I’m so amazed by it because I’ve met people in real life also who are like, ‘Oh yeah, I follow your comics’ and they tell me how much they love it.

“Anytime someone mentions how much they love my stuff, it makes me so happy.”

Another fan who has chosen to show his fandom through cartoons is Lance Maxwell, a 51-year-old teacher from Grandview, Manitoba, who has a penchant for all types of artistic expression.

Unlike Lam, Maxwell’s fandom dates back to the dynasty Oilers as he was drawn to the legendary Wayne Gretzky despite living two provinces away. Yes, he had the Winnipeg Jets in his backyard, but what use were they when they would get eliminated by the star-studded Oilers each season?

“It’s always been Gretzky, the boys on the bus years swayed me,” Maxwell told Daily Hive. “Back in those days, the Jets could never get past the Oilers, so why cheer for someone who didn’t make it to the second round?”

Maxwell got into the cartoon business as a young man, creating comics for his local papers. He eventually became a teacher at Assiniboine Community College, but has also worked as a mural artist and is now dabbling with a medium of art called “chainsaw carving,” which he has shared on social media.

When the Oilers won the 2015 NHL Draft Lottery and selected Connor McDavid, Maxwell wanted to do something to document this new era of the Oilers. On December 1, 2016, he posted his first Oilers cartoon on social media.

“When McDavid came into the league, I thought, ‘what better subject to kind of do something as a hobby,'” said Maxwell. “In the playoff year, in 2017, [people] started to [notice my cartoons]. It was all that stuff with the [Anaheim] Ducks, and [Zack] Kassian was a big part of that, he was a good character to draw.”

Though he has missed a few cartoons here and there, Maxwell is still going strong more than eight years later. He churns out a cartoon about an hour after each game and estimates that he has drawn about 890 cartoons over the years. Every single one of those can be seen on his X account (@LanceMaxwell2).

“My wife kind of shakes her head at me, and my kids, my boys, enjoy them as well but it’s after everyone goes to bed [when I draw them],” said Maxwell. “Sometimes I’m drawing the cartoon two or three times, it doesn’t really take me a real long time, it’s more of the thinking part of it that gets me sometimes.”

You’d think at some point drawing cartoons for that long would get tiring after a while but, like Lam, Maxwell loves to do it and won’t be stopping anytime soon.

“It’s interesting, I don’t want to let [my fans] down anymore,” laughed Maxwell. “It’s got to the point where I got a number of followers that have really enjoyed the cartoons over the years.

“I appreciate the fact that people are enjoying them.”

Preston HodgkinsonPreston Hodgkinson
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