It’s hard for me to feel excitement about these playoffs and the amazing storylines coming out of them without simultaneously resenting the last 8 years of Oiler hockey. I continually get reminded of how absolutely insane it is for an NHL team to operate as they have for almost a decade. It’s bad enough that they decided the best way to rebuild was to give away its best players for no tangible return in order to become so bad that they were guaranteed to choose high in the Draft, but they make a mockery of winning organizations in so many other ways. And so now I find myself comparing the Oil to all of these teams and I’m left with the distinct impression that this whole thing is some terrible prank being played on me.
The Pittsburgh Penguins are questioning how they can win in the NHL with just Crosby and Malkin, two of the three best players on the planet, and I look to the Oilers and think to myself “How do you guys even consider yourselves close?… This squad finished with Lander in their top 6 and their 9th Defenseman playing the wing on their bottom 6. You want to talk about a lack of depth? Try wrapping your head around how a competent organization let that happen! Shero and Bylsma are on the precipice of losing their jobs because they lost to the Rangers with a team “that lacked depth… which was easily deeper than anything the Oil have seen since 2008. I’m sorry your team was so brutal this year, Pittsburgh. At least you didn’t have the entire Oklahoma City Barons roster pretending they belonged in the NHL as you wimpered out of another lost season.
In St Louis they let go of Ken Hitchcock’s assistants after they led a team with Alex Steen as their leading scorer to a 111 point season. Let that one marinate for a minute or two before you think about the fact that Kelly Buchberger has survived 4 separate Head Coaching changes for reasons that nobody is willing or able to elaborate on. Let’s have a chat about that for a minute, shall we? Assistants are dropping like flies around the league as qualified coaches look for changing voices because their 100+ point teams couldn’t defeat other 100+ point teams in the playoffs, but the Oilers are hell-bent on retaining the same sad-sack group of underling coaches that have been instrumental in getting 4 guys fired in almost as many years. I bet Bucky and Smith have a quiet chuckle thinking about how safe their positions are when the team goes into their 8th 4 game losing streak of the year and whichever Head Coach the team suckered into the job this year has to answer questions about looming changes from the media.
I find myself semi-cheering for the Montreal Canadiens because *barf* they’re the team I want my Oilers to be when they decide to stop wasting time. We (those of us trapped in Edmonton) have been told that we’re too small to play against big tough teams since Bob Stauffer popularized the word “Smurf… as a means of describing Oiler forwards. Meanwhile the Habs are using their speedy skilled forwards to hack at the knees of the devastating Bruins. Oh, you mean teams can win games even if they have smaller players? Hey, can we get Cogliano back for that 2nd round pick or…no? We cant? And here I thought he was too much like everybody else and nobody could succeed with small speedy guys.
But maybe the worst part about cheering for Montreal, even a little, is the fact that they have this really brash and exuberant talented young player that they just refuse to shame into being an automaton. As an Oiler fan I’m trying to wrap my head around how a quality young man like PK Subban is getting tons of ice, being allowed to play his game, and not being told to shut up. I mean, don’t the Canadiens understand that the proper way to deal with players like this is to break them down, completely change the way they play the game of hockey (as seen through the eyes of a formerly fringe player), and make sure he feels like the organization doesn’t even want him DESPITE the fact they chose him 1st Overall in the entire draft the year before?
Wake up, Montreal! PK Subban doesn’t cry himself to sleep wondering how to play hockey or whether you even want him. Don’t you care about his long term success???
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