"Jay Bouwmeester grew up in Edmonton, but he didn't have a glossy poster of an earlier Bo (Mironov) on his bedroom wall and didn't hang around the Edmonton Oilers dressing room hoping Dave Manson walked by so he could get his autograph on a scrap of paper.

He wouldn't have known Gary Suter from Brent Sutter, either.

The Calgary Flames? Just the team down the road.

The Battle of Alberta was his schoolteacher father Dan's uncivil war, so you can excuse the son if

he wasn't carried away psychologically on Saturday night because he was in the hated red jersey for his first time playing in a league game

in Edmonton. Sacrilege? Nah.

"I've been asked the question a lot (about the Battle of Alberta)

...but I was never a huge Oiler fan. I remember the last Stanley Cup here,

but that was 1990," said Bouwmeester, who was six years old and getting ready for Grade 1 at the

time. "To be honest, I

liked Detroit. I liked Steve

Yzerman.

"I was too young to appreciate it all," he added about things like Doug Risebrough shredding Marty McSorley's sweater with his skates in a fit of pique, or Wayne Gretzky blowing the short-handed goal past Mike Vernon.

"After that (1990 Cup win), when I was getting older here and could understand the game, there were some pretty lean years (for both Alberta teams)."

Bouwmeester's dad, who has also been a big Boston Bruins fan, joked that he couldn't see himself in a Flames ball cap when Jay was negotiating with Calgary in late June. But that's all changed now.

"They've jumped on board," said Bouwmeester, whose parents can easily hop down the QEII Highway to see him play, where previously they could only see him at Christmas when he played for the Florida Panthers."