Hopefully by now it's clear that there are 2 teams I still can't stand and actively cheer against: The Vancouver Canucks and the Calgary Flames. It's a rivalry. For Western Canadian teams the Flames and Oilers were the FIRST rivalry. The Canucks only recently in their history started to matter enough to hate and those 80's Flames/Oilers battles were legendary. It's the way I was raised.

Sadly, for a long time now the Oilers are the ones that haven't mattered. It's hard to keep the appearances of a rivalry going when one team is getting its teeth kicked in constantly. The Oil have already dropped 3 games to the Flames this season and that's quite enough, thank you very much.

From my end, the Oilers will never be able to compete for the Playoffs in the West until they can start beating the Flames with regularity. Once they start doing that I'll believe we're getting closer to the end of this painful era in Oiler history.

Meanwhile, the Flames are currently sitting in the last Wild Card spot and need to beat the Oilers to maintain their chances of making the second season. It's horrible.

Edmonton has started to find ways to win under Todd Nelson and now sport the same record in their last 10 games as the Flames. The goaltending has gotten better, the underlying numbers have gotten a little worse. But the biggest change might be that the Oilers are playing like they believe they can come back and win games.

I'm hopeful that the change in attitude under the new coach can help start to turn things around against the Flames.

A very recent trend has been that the team is showing up in after the whistle scrums and sticking up for each other. I can't help but wonder if this is something that Nelson directly addressed with his team after the St Louis game. You might recall Pouliot taking a few shots in that one while the rest of his teammates had somehow already hit the showers.

For the past several games now it's like a switch was flicked and all of a sudden when opposition players get too close to the goalie the Oilers are getting in their faces. After the whistle the players aren't skating away from the action as fast as possible anymore.

Under these conditions we might start to see this rivalry start to come back. The Oilers need to play with some more passion and stop getting kicked around. The Flames have good reason to ground the Oilers into fine paste tonight and the Oilers are starting to finally fight back in games.

We would be all better off for it if the hate that used to exist between these two teams started to show up on the ice as much as it does in the comment sections of these blogs.

LINEUP

Hall was again not practicing yesterday and now Nikitin had his shoulder hurt against the Sabres. The team is missing a big part of its Offense with Hall out of games. That top line hasn't exactly looked great with Pouliot subbed into the 1LW. RNH and Eberle need to really step it up. With Nikitin out for an extended time someone should get called up but they haven't been yet. Aulie will play tonight and he should be ready to make an impression on Nelson.

UPDATE: Hall did take the morning skate.

Pouliot RNH Eberle
Yakupov Roy Purcell
Hendricks Gordon Klinkhammer
Fraser Lander Gazdic

Ference Petry
Klefbom Schultz
Aulie Fayne

???

OILERS KEYS TO THE GAME

1) Landering Money. Anton Lander is playing better than he has ever played before. That's a combination of knowing what Nelson wants and just finally maturing into his game. He was rushed to the NHL when the Oilers were just starting this rebuild and it was an absolute mistake. It's another example of how poorly thought out the development model of the team was just a few years ago. Now his Offense from the 4th line has helped this team move out of the funk it had been in.

2) Not Jultzing About. The past 3-4 games have been virtually Jultz free. That is to say that this is the best stretch Justin Schultz has played all year. He has been activating more frequently in the offensive zone and actually playing physically in his own zone. He had been so against hitting or being hit this season that I was sure it just wasn't in him to step up and separate the puck from the opposition by force. This is the best he has played all year and it is a welcome change.

3) Yak Rising. I might just be going insane but I am sure that of the players in the top 6 it has been Nail Yakupov who's been the best among them in the past week. STILL he can't score at all because Oiler fans are not allowed to smile, but he is creating chances out there. He had 5 shots in 15 minutes of ice against the Sabres. Something has to give soon.

Puck drops at 8:10PM Mountain Time on CBC. Tank On!

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