Game #75 Preview
vs. 
Mike Sciarpelletti ♦
Wow…
Hockey so uninspiring that it actually costs us a game’s worth of articles. With the lack of discussion on the Oilverse comments, this must be true of our readers as well. The Oilers season has ceased to be fun. The St. Louis Blues stomped the Oilers, who are ready to snatch up yet another first overall selection in this year’s draft.
Crest on the Front
Tonight is about pride. The Oilers have every excuse to continue playing poorly, but now is the time to take some pride in the jersey. I’m sorry, but as an Oilers fan losing to the Flames is absolutely unacceptable tonight. They are still our provincial rival, and helping dash their playoff hopes would be bittersweet justice for Oilers fans like this observer who demands so little of this team.
Will this be a challenge? Certainly, fortuitous as my opening lines might seem, the Oil are in it knee-deep against Calgary… why? Because these are the Oilers opening lines:
Eberle – VandeVelde - Hartikainen
Paajarvi - Cogliano - Omark
Jones – O’Marra - Reddox
Jacques – Fraser – MacIntyre
It must be tough to be Tom Renney nowadays, standing down the never ending barrage of Oilers related questions and responding with the dignity and grace a franchise of this stature deserves:
“We know we’ve got a formidable opponent tonight and we’re going to have to make sure we can play to our depth as well to have success,” Renney said to oilers.com. “So we put some combinations together that we think will help us do that and also afford guys the opportunity to play and experience the NHL so we can have a good look at them.”
This team of inexperienced NHLers will be going against some of the more seasoned talent of the Western Conference. One thing I think most people don’t understand about the NHL is this: it’s the best hockey league in the world. The pace they play as it is incredible, team-work is absolutely essential in this league. Hot streaks such as the one that the Flames experienced coming out of Christmas are not to suggest improvements on the part of the Flames but merely achieving the desired result. That’s it.
In the case of the Oilers, however, the opposite is true, and equally frustrating is the fact that the pieces we are trying to develop are not getting a fair shot. To make an NHL player he needs to be playing on an NHL team, and this most certainly is an AHL franchise in Oilers disguise.
But that is why tonight could be so sweet! The worst detractor of the Oilers fan is our natural born enemy, and consequentially Flames fans have had their fair share of “nyah nyah nyahs” from atop the NHL standing board’s black line of death.
One can surmise that the Oilers are in it to win it, but the skill disparity is very apparent. What is not certain is to what extent the Oilers are willing to take this drive to win. They will be beat up physically, will likely surrender the first goal (which is poison to this team’s confidence).
They will need to figure out a way to work with their lack of speed while actually maintaining poise in every aspect of the game.
You might ask “do you not mean poise in the defence zone?”, to which I would respond not at all. The Oilers cannot threaten a retreating defence with an attack because they do not have the foot speed. They cannot backcheck fast enough to stop a fast rush and cannot risk anything.
This reserved style usually works for a while, but they often end up giving up chances whenever they do get a chance (which is rarely) because they are not fast enough. Redundancy! It has definitely been the word of the year in terms of the problems facing the team. But injuries are injuries, and young team is young team.
I refuse to just call it a year as a fan, so let’s go win tonight boys!
Oilverse Prediction
1-0 is the only way this Oilers team would win. We need a goalie!
