Mark Spector

Mark Spector is a columnist for sportsnet.ca

Once the City of Champions, Edmonton now boasts last place status in the NHL, AHL and CFL.

EDMONTON - It's been a tough year in The Chuck.

Here, a city whose teams once beat the Vancouvers, Calgarys and Torontos of the world for fun - and with no shortage of cockiness and swagger- has taken up residence in Canadian sport's basement suite.

Then came the summer, when the deposed local baseball manager, Brent Bowers, charged out of the Edmonton Capitals dugout one evening in California, directing an atrocious diatribe at gay umpire Billy Van Raaphorst that would place this city's good name in international headlines next to the term "homophobic tirade" for two embarrassing weeks.

Nice.

At least Edmonton fans had the Eskimos, right? A team that once made the playoffs for 34 consecutive seasons surely would set things straight.

Well, even the mighty Eskimos have hit the skids. The latest is priceless:

After deciding to cut offensive lineman Calvin Armstrong on the same day his wife was giving birth to their first child, Esks coach Richie Hall called the player in to deliver the harsh news.

"Kyle," Hall began…

Then, on the eve of Oilers training camp, Jason Smith - the longest serving captain since Wayne Gretzky and a highly respected Oilers alum - turns up on Page 1 after being charged with assault.

All those years of winning, it seems, have come with a price. The worm has turned hard in Edmonton, with a Tiger Woods-like fall from grace.

On Friday however, the Three Horsemen of the Apocalypse rode into Oilers rookie camp; three young prodigies expected to shoulder the load of turning an entire city's sporting fortunes around.

In The City of Desperate Sports Fans, Taylor Hall, Jordan Eberle and Magnus Paajarvi, aren't being asked to do much. Just turn the whole thing around and make things the way they once were, please.

"Whatever goes down must come up," Hall figured on Friday, when presented with the job description he and his mates face in Edmonton. "There's a lot of excitement in this city, in the dressing room. Talking to players you can tell they're very excited for the youth to come in, just get a new vibe in the dressing room. Us kids, we want to get in and make the biggest impact that we can.

"There are going to be some growing pains at the start, but as we go on we should be fine."

Hall, the No. 1 overall pick in the 2010 draft, is tangible fruit of this city's sporting labour. Eberle, the 22nd pick in '08, became a clutch Canadian at the World Juniors, while Paajarvi was an All-Star at the men's World Championships last spring and has three Swedish Elite League seasons under his belt.

They all have pedigree. And they'll all share the pressure of grabbing a Canadian franchise by its bootstraps and lifting it back to respectability, perhaps even beyond.

"I've always wanted to be a part of that," Hall said. "With my play on the ice I've put myself in the spotlight, and put a lot of pressure on myself.

"Obviously, this is a whole different animal. This is the NHL, and it's a Canadian city. It's a little bit of a fishbowl… But being able to go through this with a couple of other guys, and knowing that the pressure is on us … if we relish in it, us kids, we'll do fine."

"There has been a lot of pressure on us three now, Jordan and Taylor and I," Paajarvi admitted. "I think it makes it so much easier that we are three guys, as opposed to just one."

It's true. This is the type of rebuild that can be so heavy; it can crush one young prospect.

With rookie camp getting underway Saturday in Kelowna, head coach Tom Renney is mindful that - even spread among the three - the expectations don't get out of hand.

"You can get caught up in it if you're not careful," said Renney. "There has got to be a vision to this, and Daryl (Katz), Kevin (Lowe) and Steve (Tambellini) have all identified that, with an end point in mind, this is how we're going to get there.

"But you don't want to protect your players to the point where they don't get to feel this thing, live it and develop a relationship with it," he added. "It's a living organism, this whole thing. We'll have to deal with it on a day to day basis."

As long as this "living organism" wins once in a while, it will be a pleasant change here in Edmonton.