It was June 21, for heaven's sake, the first day of summer, and the longest of many long days. In Edmonton, where the summer sun hangs in the sky forever, thoughts should have turned from hockey to long, sweet evenings of golf. And yet, in Rexall Place, the Oilers pasted on smiles and posed for their annual team picture on a fresh sheet of ice. They made a last visit to the dressing room to empty their lockers and say their goodbyes and try to come to terms with falling one game short of the Stanley Cup. It was that last game in Raleigh that weighed heavy on 47-year-old coach Craig MacTavish. On this warm and sunny afternoon, he seemed trapped in a long dark night of the solstice.

"I don't know if you become more disappointed with the passage of time but I think that is the case for me," he said amid the chaos of a locker room filled with media, players, their children, and even a few of their parents. "I was able to rationalize it a little better after the game than I can now. You grow increasingly disappointed to a point," he said with a sigh. "I don't know where that point ends." It was a rare show of vulnerability by a coach not given to public displays of personal feelings.

It has not helped, of course, that Edmonton -- his home -- is the ultimate hockey city, and that it is hurting after coming so close to reliving those glory years of the 1980s. MacTavish started sprouting roots here almost upon his arrival in the fall of 1985, as a wounded 27-year-old checking forward in need of a new direction and a second chance. Edmonton provided that, not to mention friendship, respect and his wife Debbie. MacTavish returned the favour in abundance, as a player in three Stanley Cup wins here, as a gritty team captain, and, since his return from New York in 1999, first as an assistant, and a year later as head coach.

Last week, even after taking his team on a two-month playoff tear that transfixed a nation, that was clearly not enough. He'd frequently reminded his players through this playoff run to have fun and enjoy the moment, for it is a rare and wonderful experience. But now he was incapable of taking his own advice. "Not to take anything away from Carolina," he said of the cup-winning Hurricanes, "we thought we were the best team in the finals. But, we obviously didn't prove that."

The next day, thousands of Edmontonians turned out for an Oilers rally at City Hall. It was a classy, upbeat salute, attended by members of the team's ownership group, by general manager Kevin Lowe, and by several Oilers stars, including captain Jason Smith, assistant captain Ethan Moreau and hometown hero Fernando Pisani. Notable by his absence was MacTavish. It was left to Lowe, his friend and boss, to explain the "mixed feelings" that caused many of the team to miss the event, as much as they appreciated the sentiment behind it. "We're not an organization that celebrates failure," said Lowe, a key part of all five Oiler cup wins. "Even though the seventh game of the Stanley Cup finals is good, in our minds it's failure."

MacTavish's hard-headed, uncompromising standard says much about the way he has always approached the game. He was, after all, the last NHLer playing without a helmet when he retired in 1997. It also says much about the man he became in Edmonton. He was born in London, Ont., earned a hockey scholarship to the University of Massachusetts-Lowell, and signed with the nearby Boston Bruins in 1979. It all fell into place. "I wasn't taking life seriously," he later said, "and a lot of things seemed like a joke to me." That changed, brutally, on Jan. 25, 1984, when MacTavish, then 25, left a bar under the influence of alcohol, triggering a crash that killed 26-year-old Kim Radley of Maine. He pleaded guilty to vehicular homicide and was sentenced to a year in jail. It was there he began rebuilding his life.

Although not required as part of his sentence, MacTavish went to schools, told his story and warned students of the perils of drinking and driving. And he initiated a wrenching three-hour meeting with Radley's parents in the correctional centre courtyard. He expressed his sorrow and his shame, and he received from the woman's deeply Christian family a remarkable degree of forgiveness. "What good are we going to do if we crucify Craig," asked the father, Ronald Foote, in a 1985 interview with the New York Daily News. He called MacTavish an excellent young man, but like too many such men in sports, the big money and the big cars come too easily and too fast. "You can't build a skyscraper," Foote said, "if it ain't got a foundation underneath it."

MacTavish, in that story, called his meeting with the family a turning point. "It alleviated some of my guilt, obviously," he said. "I can't say enough about them. They were unbelievable." After his release, he sought a fresh start in a new place to build his foundation. It was Glen Sather, then the Oilers coach, who came calling. "I'm not a do-gooder," he said when he announced the signing. "He made a mistake and he has paid for his error, but I want him because he's a whale of a player." Sather was right. He was tough on opponents, fearless when blocking shots, and he had a thinking man's grasp of the game. Sather, who left a stellar career managing the Oilers to become general manager of the Rangers, would eventually draw MacTavish to New York, first as a player and later as an assistant coach.

Ottawa Senators general manager John Muckler was an assistant coach in Edmonton when MacTavish arrived. He recalls a third- and fourth-line player who carved out a niche as a faceoff man, a penalty killer and a valuable offensive asset. By 1990, when Muckler coached the Oilers to their only cup without Wayne Gretzky in the lineup, MacTavish had grown into a respected team leader. By then Muckler saw MacTavish as a coach in training. "I think that's why he played as long as he did because he was a student of the game," says Muckler. "He didn't sit on the bench to rest. He sat there and analyzed. I think that's why he's such a great coach now."

MacTavish bunked with Lowe, then a star defenceman with the Oilers, during his first few weeks in Edmonton. The two became fast friends. He was thrown into the Gretzky-era Oilers, one of the best teams ever assembled in hockey. "It was a good character team," MacTavish told Maclean's of those heady early years. "You really had a front row seat to a real collection of winners: coaches, managers and players. It really affirmed to me how things operated on a championship calibre team."

He also bonded with the city, so much so that he kept a home in Edmonton even after he was traded to New York, and then three other teams, before he retired. "My [three] kids have been brought up here, largely, and they've enjoyed it. We've got a lot of friends here. It's been very good to me and my family."

This season -- the first under a salary cap that gave small markets a more equal footing against big money teams -- was the first real opportunity for Lowe and MacTavish to prove their pell-mell Oiler-style of hockey can again bring success in a transformed league. It also showed MacTavish's ability as a tactician, when he went against type and turned the Oilers into a defensive shell to defeat heavily favoured Detroit in the first round.

MacTavish's style earned him a huge measure of support from his players. Chris Pronger, the brilliant towering defenceman who was on the ice more than half of every playoff game, was briefly a teammate of MacTavish's during his final playing days in St. Louis. "You know what, he coaches similar to the way he played," says Pronger. "He was a heart-and-soul kind of guy when I played with him, and that's certainly the way he coaches."

The respect is clearly mutual. MacTavish said he'd love to build next season's team from this year's roster. Still, Edmonton has a long list of unrestricted free agents, including their injured star goaltender Dwayne Roloson, Michael Peca, fan-favourite Pisani and Sergei Samsonov. Keeping the team intact, and under the $44-million salary cap, will be a challenge for Lowe. MacTavish didn't make it any easier by announcing there are some fat raises due his players. "They set themselves in a different category from the way they performed and the way they delivered," he said. "My sense as a coach, a little bit different than a manager, is that they're entitled to be paid commensurate to their accomplishments, which are significant."

It was in the raw, painful moments after their game seven loss that MacTavish spoke of those accomplishments to a dispirited team. He reminded them of the stacked odds they faced during a tough year, and of the playoff battles they won. He told them of how deep they reached and how much they learned about themselves in the process. "It was everything positive," said Jarrett Stoll, a 24-year-old centre. "He couldn't say enough about how proud he was of us."

Maybe someday, before the Edmonton days shorten into fall, the disappointment will lift and the coach will allow himself a full share of pride, for a towering accomplishment, built on a good foundation.

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