EDMONTON — It’s a complex place, this city that hopes to break the Canadian curse and bring a Stanley Cup home to Canada for the first time since 1993.

Edmonton, like a Winnipeg or a Hamilton, is a city you need to live in to love. I know this — I was born here and live here today.

And as my colleagues from around the National Hockey League spend some June time here in The Big E — rather than their usual two-day visit between November and February — I have heard more than once: “Hey, this isn’t a bad town when it’s warm and green.”

Not a bad town at all, especially when it comes to its sports. There, Edminites — as boxing promoter Don King once called us — have been graced with unending generosity, perhaps a reward for the loyal Edmontonian, the shoveler of snow and the swatter of mosquitoes.

Here, in December and January, it is dark when you drive to work in the morning. But the good news is, it’s also pitch black when you drive home at 4:30 p.m.

In Edmonton, we enjoy/endure a real Canadian winter, not some Toronto version with slush and wet, or the chinooks that ruin a good cold spell in Calgary. Up here, the first flake that falls in November is the last flake standing in March, in a city where the snow doesn’t melt in winter months — but neither do the outdoor hockey rinks.

“I think springtime is the best,” smiled Darnell Nurse, who walked out of Rogers Place after Game 1 on Wednesday into a June night not yet dark at 10 p.m., in a city that wasn’t planning on going to bed soon anyhow.

“I’ve been here ten-and-a-half years, I’m raising a family here,” Nurse said. “The atmosphere, especially when playoffs hit, is absolutely amazing. Yes, the winters are a bit dark. But you get through those and it’s a great place to be.”

This spring, hockey holds Edmonton hostage with no possibility of release. The tee sheets at the local courses are wide open after about 2 p.m. on a game day, while bars and restaurants are teeming with people on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and then nearly empty on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday throughout the playoffs.

An Edmontonian embraces this, of course, just as sports has strangely embraced this prairie city by miraculously placing two of hockey’s greatest names — a couple of Ontario boys — right in our midst.

Why does Edmonton, of all places, get Wayne Gretzky and then Connor McDavid? Not to mention players like Leon Draisaitl, Paul Coffey, Mark Messier or Jari Kurri — who would be the greatest players in the history of some franchises all by themselves?

What creates the kind of luck that makes former Buffalo GM Tim Murray sour on drafting Europeans right on cue in 2014? The stubborn Sabres took Sam Reinhart right ahead of Edmonton, which settled for Draisaitl.

And what did Edmonton do to deserve Oakville’s Evan Bouchard, drafted at No. 10 — after Vitaly Kravtsov (9th), Adam Boquist (8th), and Filip Zadina (6th) — a franchise defenceman who owns the hardest shot in the National Hockey League today?

Why did some kid named Warren Moon leave the University of Washington and land here, of all destinations, because the NFL didn’t want a Black quarterback back in 1978? Edmonton would become the only Canadian Football League team to win five consecutive Grey Cups during Moon’s time, an NFL Hall of Famer who cut his teeth on the lush grass of Commonwealth Stadium.

It’s crazy to think that the Oilers, a World Hockey Association survivor that was once nearly sold to Houston, would contest nine Stanley Cups over a period where the Toronto Maple Leafs would contest exactly zero?

And how on earth did it come to pass that Mattias and Ida Ekholm would travel from across the world, eventually wind up here and identify Edmonton as a place they could take their three children to the ski hill or the outdoor rink, raising them the way they would have had they stayed home in northern Sweden?

“(Edmonton is) a lot like home, I would say,” said fellow Swede and Oilers winger Viktor Arvidsson. “It has all of the seasons, and cold winters, and that’s what we’re used to. It reminds me a lot of home and brings you back to your roots.”

Edmonton is North America’s northernmost city of one million people, and they’ll watch hockey here no matter the product. The Decade of Darkness was doubly harsh, if you can picture a meaningless game in December as the best choice of events on any given night.

Today, however, payback has arrived.

The team is good, with chances of being great. The fans, though buffeted by the wacky winds of separation, sing O Canada so loud inside Rogers Place that you can hear it from the decks of nearby apartments.

And McDavid-to-Draisaitl has replaced Gretzky-to-Kurri with seamless brilliance.

Heck, players even want to sign here again, after 15 years of going neck and neck with Winnipeg on no-trade clauses across the league.

“I’ve had some experience in some other cities that people would say they probably wouldn’t want to live there as well,” said the former Jet and Sabre Evander Kane, with a smile. “The one thing about Edmonton is, they’ve been in the league for such a long time, and the community really knows how to treat their players. That’s something that I really picked up on right away.

“You know, once you actually get here and get to know your way around the city a little bit more, you realize there’s actually quite a bit to do. It is a good spot for families, and they have great summers, as you (media) guys are seeing right now.”

Somehow, Stanley has found his way back to this northern outpost, again.

He should spend a summer here. He might like it.