There is always one person on the rollercoaster that gets to the end of the ride and says, “That’s all there is?” For as long as there have been ups there have been downs and there are always people who are going to bitch and complain right to a Stanley Cup win, then immediately start chirping the GM for his salary cap woes in the offseason before the guy is even done engraving the Cup. Do you really want to be the guy in 1981 who was calling out 99 for going cold for a few games? Cause you know those people probably existed back then in cool denim jackets and other fashions of the age.
Yes, these fashionable but misguided 1980s Oilers fans probably sat in local bars drinking stubbies of Labatt Blue and calling for heads after the Oilers got handed their asses by teams in the regular season or went cold for a stretch. Just like Oilers fans of 2017, the Negative Neds and Nancys probably thought the sky was falling all the time then too, despite the team being on the verge of greatness. But they did it with perms and cool moustaches whereas we are doing it with hipster beards and skinny jeans.
It’s just like 1980s guy arm wrestling the giant guy in the Miller ad up there, straining and stressing away when in reality he has no control over the situation whatsoever. It’s five games into the season, Nation. We can’t be this mad this early. Where would we go from here?
THIS CALLS FOR A BLUE
Surely the Oilers aren’t as bad as their first five games suggest. Powerplay: last. Penalty Killing: last. GF: dead last. GA: 32nd. Someone had the temerity to call out Connor for Heaven’s sakes — he with five points in five games, four of which are arguably some of the worst hockey games we have seen around here in awhile.
Heavens to Grundo, Nation. Does anything buy anyone slack anymore? The playoffs were five months ago. Does anyone honestly believe the Oilers won’t pull it together? Does anyone honestly think that 20/21 year old Connor coming off an ART ROSS Trophy and a 100 point season will pilot the 31st place power play all season? If you do hit me up on Twitter with bets, I will legitimately bet anyone the Oilers make the post season. What a bunch of nonsense.
Looking at Twitter, you would think that the Oilers had undrafted McDavid, traded and re-signed the 2013 team and we are all hoping Yak will evolve into a superstar still. This isn’t the team that broke our hearts all those cold winter nights. These aren’t the players or the coaching staff that will sit back, panic and reinvent the wheel, deploying a swarm defence that flies in the face of 100 years of NHL tradition and practices. There is a plan that is currently not working and a new plan will be developed and the talented Oilers will execute. End of story.
ENTER YAMAMOTO
I feel like we collectively used up all the good baby jokes with Ryan Nugent-Hopkins. Long considered to be the youngest NHL player in the league for four consecutive seasons, Lil Nuge played in his 400th game last night — 400 games! That’s when you are considered a veteran and the top shelf NHLPA pension plan kicks in. Outrageous. If the Nuge is in his 400th game, that makes him no longer 13-years-old. That makes me 1000 years old and you 5000 years old. I miss young Nuge and his wide-eyed staring at the scoreboard. Not this moustachio’d Adonis that stands before us having his best start in years.
But wait — what do we have here?
Who is this little bug eyed Sprite twirling and whirling around the ice? Festooned with the 56 — which must stand for how many weeks old or how many centimetres high he is — he’s out there playing his heart out. Ain’t he the cutest thing you have ever seen? If the Nuge is going to go off and become a man on us, thank heavens the Hockey Gods have sent us an even younger, even smaller DARE WE EVEN SAY CUTER hockey guy.
The new guy has balls of steel and the heart of a lion. He is in the corners on the regular and the other night I saw him beeline into a scrum like he was 12 feet taller and at least 10 years older. I remember other Oilers Superstars that wouldn’t go into a scrum if they were handing out Victoria Secret Model’s phone numbers. And yet here is Yamamoto, half their size with twice their heart, right in the mix. I like this kid. I like him a lot. Will your way onto this lineup ol’ sport. You’ve got the sauce.
AND THEREFORE IN CONCLUSION
Rather than ordering paper for the new blueprints of rebuild 10.3.5, I’m going to take the first five games for what they are worth: five games of an 82 game season, a season with Young Superstars, great storylines and a Scotiabank Player of the Game who somehow stayed on the ice past warmup and made the team named Kailer Yamamoto. The sky is not falling, all is not lost.
RIP Gord Downie. When a Canadian Icon dies at 53 in the prime of his life it makes a person take pause. The Hip will reign forever in Canada and all around the World.
nothing makes me happier than an opportunity to place a solid FIST on a Wanye article
OH MY HOW KIND
RIP Gord… </3
I feel much better…Wanye, you are a rockand a beauty. RIP Gord.
???
Yamo is the best – though he dons number 56.
RIP Gord – Check out Sonic 102.9 today for the tribute show.
I like to throw out a lil teaser and see who is paying attention. POINTS AWARDED
Who thought the Oilers would be 8 points behind an expansion team only 5 games into the season?
I am in 100% agreement. I sit for a moment and reflect to the home opener, in which I witnessed with my very own eyes a full 60 minutes stitched together with such perfection, tenacity and moxie. We out shot the Flames 45-27 and held them to have, at best 5 Grade “A” scoring opportunities. Talbot played well, but he didn’t really need to. There was a team on the ice of Rogers Place that night that looked like they just picked up where they left off in the post season. Now after reflection I deflect my thoughts to the last 3 games. Have they played well enough to win? Out of the 180 minutes… Maybe 80 of those minutes yes. Now the question is not what are we gonna do? IS THIS SEASON A BUST?! The question is who in that locker room is gonna turn the light back on that must have accidentally got bumped by the one eyed Driaclops when he was finding his way to sick bay.I will not feed the negativity and nor should anyone else, we are out of the D.O.D. and we will never enter that place again.
Now one last 2 pennies to drop into this bucket… The defending Stanley Cup Champs dropped their first game of the season 10-1 to the team that we play next, the same team that lost to the Toronto Maple Leafs, the very same team that we will be playing on the back ass end off a back to back.. We win that game… Talbot steals one for us, and the very light switch may have been turned back on.
On a side note, here is a brilliant idea. Instead of every one frantically searching for that panic button, how about we search for our orange and blue face paint, pom poms scarves, and anything else we can show our support for our team. Need I remind you they did give us 2 glorious rounds of the playoffs last year. So how about this, maybe show up to the next game when the Stars are in town, and use the voices that we brought to the playoffs to help wake this team up. They are a young team and feed off the energy in the building and when there are 1500 empty seats and you can hear a pin drop in there sometimes, that probably isn’t the best conditions to work in, the best thing that could have happened to the crowd @ the Carolina game was the guy with the seemingly infinite supply of orange Oilers shirts dancing and throwing them in the crowd. I’m sure we will all be cheering loudly for that game anyways when the Oilers come off the road trip 4-4-0.
It was just a thought.
Just a thought? More like a novel!
A good novel I might add – lol
Draiclops might be the best nickname yet
Man, I wish I would have drank enough last post-season to forget about 2007 to 2016. Congrats to anyone who did.
These last 4 games isn’t the bottom falling out, we are just heading back to our place in the NHL, the place we are all used to (anyone who still rocks a blue jersey anyway). No sense getting bent out of shape about it, no panic button to mash. All our spots are still there with the same ass dents in them. Still warm. Have a seat, warm beer will be served shortly.
LT you are by far my favourite Oilers Sportswriter (aside from the venerable Cam Lewis*nod*) … but tell me honestly… how beers deep were you into writing this article? HAHA
PS- RIP Gord Downie </3
how many*
Gord Downie dead at 53 does give pause. His music is a fundamental in the soundtrack of my life and for that I feel blessed and fortunate. may he rest in peace.
I’m not a fan but I get how you feel because that’s how I felt with Chris Cornell and even more so with Chester Bennington. May they all rest in peace.
I’m takin’ Gord hard, and took Chris hard too. Makes me remember Jeff Buckley…so many.
Too many.
It’s been a shaitty year on several fronts.
I think you used the wrong clip from that Simpsons episode…
Holy crap. We can embed videos on here? Well played btw
Hopefully Cam Talbot’s chapter will be written soon!! GOOOOOOOOOOIIIIIILLLLEEERRRRRSSS!!!!!!!
Well mcdavid is on pace for 50 goals and 98 points and yet the team is where it is so obviously the captain is not the problem.
Ya, and if some Maroons weren’t playing like a Maroon, he’d have several more.
From near last to Stanley Cup Finals – that will be the 2017-2018 Edmonton Oilers story line.
The following is not a troll comment:
You’re not getting through us.
The Flames are a good team, no doubt. But they haven’t beaten the Oilers in a long time. If both sides make it into the playoffs and we have a Battle of Alberta, the Flames will get demolished.
Nope. Not with that defence. Not if you expect Cam to do what he did last year.
You’re a good team, but realistically a second round exit is the best you can hope for…with that defence.
The way things are going I’ll take that second round exit no questions asked.
The sky is falling. Team is worse than at the end of last year. I didn’t expect them to be 1-4 but we definitely didn’t improve over the summer.
Our GM built a roster with no top 6 right wingers. Sekera left a massive whole on the defense to start the season. I’d honestly rather have Pouliot than Jokinen at this point. This is our one year window before Connor gets a massive raise and we start choking on the salary cap ceiling.
We are done yet but the Oiler’s need to start pointing this ship in a different direction.
Any day with a new Wanye article is a good day.
AREN’T YOU A GENTLEMAN
This is the best written article on Oilers Nation I have ever read. I got mad. I laughed. I cried. “If there’s a goal that everyone remembered…”
Thank you, Wanye.
I happen to agree with you, dear Wayne, for real, BUT…
…I noticed that your article was void of any speculations on how your defence is going to…play out, we’ll say.
Wanye. How about this. A Supreme Court Justice speech excerpt.
As follows……
“Now the commencement speakers will typically also wish you good luck and extend good wishes to you. I will not do that, and I’ll tell you why. From time to time in the years to come, I hope you will be treated unfairly, so that you will come to know the value of justice. I hope that you will suffer betrayal because that will teach you the importance of loyalty. Sorry to say, but I hope you will be lonely from time to time so that you don’t take friends for granted. I wish you bad luck, again, from time to time so that you will be conscious of the role of chance in life and understand that your success is not completely deserved and that the failure of others is not completely deserved either. And when you lose, as you will from time to time, I hope every now and then, your opponent will gloat over your failure. It is a way for you to understand the importance of sportsmanship. I hope you’ll be ignored so you know the importance of listening to others, and I hope you will have just enough pain to learn compassion. Whether I wish these things or not, they’re going to happen. And whether you benefit from them or not will depend upon your ability to see the message in your misfortunes.”
It is all a great test, and MANY are failing MISERABLY. HA!
Also.
Beer
Wish I lived in the 80’s. I actually want to watch those commercials. I also now want a Labatt Blue.
Good article.
RIP- Gord
Yamamoto can save the whole team, sheeegellll!
YAMAMOTO CAN COMPUTE