HNIC Prime Time vs. The Leaf Blowers

Hockey Night In Canada. The first game of the Saturday night double header is versus the Leafs with a tight playoff race on the line.

It doesn't get any bigger than this. ...Until next game. But for now, this is huge.

The Oilers showed up in the "Nation's Capital" on Thursday and proceeded to bring the suck. The new parts acquired at the deadline looked tired and the team didn't seem to have any umph. Gagner played a pretty good game all by himself. Everyone else took the night off.

Moving forward to this evening, I expect an up tempo, physical game from the Oilers. I expect the Leafs to suck. I expect Hemsky, Horcoff and Souray to find the score sheet finally after quite a number of games of being fairly invisible. I expect hits, forechecks, backchecks, passes and goals. I expect good hockey. I expect explosions, lasers, fog, holograms and face melting guitar solos too.

Ok Oilers and Leafs...Entertain me.

Lovingly yours,

The Towel Boy

Well for fuck sakes

Twelve seconds into the game last night I knew I was about to witness a piece of shit hockey game.

I don't know what it is with the Oilers these days, but these so called "must win" games down the stretch here don't look like much of a big deal to most of the team.

Lazy plays, lazy players, indifferent looking superstars and all around general bone headed plays are killing this team lately.  A complete lack of effort on the part of some players.

I wanna see some god damned PLAYOFF INTENSITY FROM HERE ON OUT!   DAMMIT!

The kind of intensity that people lose 5 teeth from an errant clearing attempt and come back after getting a few stitches to set up the game winner.  The kind of intensity that causes your Captain to play with dislocated shoulders.  The kind of intensity that causes pucks to enter the opposition's net by sheer fear.  The kind of intensity that takes you deep into the playoffs.  

Leave it all out on the ice type of shit.

Rollie seems to be the only player that is consistently playing at this level lately.  The rest of the team seems to be invisible one game and there the next.  Except for Sam Gagner over the past few games.  Quite solid.

Gagner played his wee little heart out again last night.  He was all over the ice.  Banging, crashing, scoring, passing, preparing donairs for Penner and generally being the little buzz saw we hoped he'd be out of the gates this season.

MacT didn't sound terribly impressed with most of his defensive core in the post game comments last night.  In fact, it was probably one of the few times this season where he didn't try and spin the game to sound like it was better than it was.  There was no "Well, I thought we played good, we got a lot of good looks at the net."  There was no "The score wasn't indicative of how well we played."  No...just MacT calling out his defense and looking generally pissed off at most of his team.  

GOOD!  Now maybe something will happen to kickstart this team into playoff mode.

One can only hope.

Towel Boy, out.

Trade Deadline Day Hangover

 oooohhhhh...my head hurts.

Ok.  So the trade deadline came and went.  It looked like it was shaping up to be a deadline where the Oiler brass would sit on their hands and not get anything done.  I had my fire and venom blog almost completely written when about 20 minutes after the deadline passed, word came down that the Oilers had possibly made a trade.

I says "Pardon?"

*deletes venomous blog*

With my ears glued to the Tradecenter broadcast from TSN I impatiently waited, for what seemed like an eternity, to find out what the hell the Oilers had actually done.  News slowly started to trickle in...and It was confusing.

"The Oilers have completed a trade with Carolina"  was the first word we received.

...oookkk....  Robin Brownlee over at Oilersnation.com had mentioned a couple weeks ago that if the Oilers traded Erik Cole, Carolina would probably be their dance partner.

"The Oilers have traded with Carolina, for Patrick O'sullivan" was the second words we received.

.....oookkk....  But O'sullivan doesn't play for them.  What the fuck TSN?  Gord Miller, are you on the sauce again?

"Ok, the Kings have made a deal with Carolina for Justin Williams for Patrick O'sullivan."

...oooKKK!....It became clear, at that point, that the Oilers, Kings and Hurricanes got down and dirty with some raunchy 3 way action!

Sweet!

But wait...what'd we give up?  Not Erik Cole...Not Erik Cole...NOT ERICK COLE........fuck...it was Erik Cole.

I liked Cole.  I thought he was just starting to hit his stride with the team.  He was looking good over the past few weeks and had a helluva game in Nashville the other night.  But in this crazy, 

salary capped NHL, it all comes down to asset management and with Cole being a UFA this summer, Tambo couldn't risk the chance that Cole would walk and the Oilers would be left with nothing but a nice parting handshake.  So, I GUESS...from that standpoint, the deal is alright.  We also got a 2nd round pick in the deal.  Not bad.  Not bad at all.

But wait...what was this?  ANOTHER deal had happened with the Mighty Oil?  Jesus guys, it's like 30 minutes past the deadline?  I waited impatiently once again to find out what the hell happened.

Turns out Tambo struck a deal with the Sabres to bring Ales Kotalik over for a 2nd round pick.  Ohhhhhhhhh....but wait........I thought the Sabres brass absolutely hated everything about the Oilers and would do anything in their powers to fuck us over cuz of the whole "Vanek Offer" sheet debacle in the summer of '07.  I guess they burried the hatchet, or simply wanted to do the deal cuz they needed to shed salary from roster to give some breathing room after the Tim Conolly extension they inked earlier in the day - plus they wouldn't have to deal with Kevin Lowe.  Either that, or Tambo is a smooth operator and had Darcy Regier eating out of the palm of his hands.  I like to think the the latter.  Honestly - WHO SAW THIS COMING!?!

Wow, guys, sexy pictures.  I hope you play hockey like you look in pictures.

So far, this season is like shades of ‘06.  The team is kinda floundering, hovering around the last playoff spot. People are calling for MacT’s head on a plate. The team is maybe somewhat lost in the weeds, some players aren’t playing up to their contracts… and then the trade deadline comes along. We pick up some somewhat fringe players that are kinda noteworthy, but not superstars, basically throw some duct tape on the roster and head on down the stretch. All of a sudden the playoffs arrive and our team is playing the best hockey we’ve seen them play in years and voila…SCF.

Let's hope history has a way of repeating itself.

Towel Boy signing off from the TBHQ Tradecenter HQ Headquarters Center and Conference Center, Toronto

Ohhhhh MAN!

Trade deadline day! W00t w00T!

I just don't know what the Oilers are gonna do today. I'd like to think Bobby Nilsson is gonna have a new address after today...but I just don't know what Tamb-lowe-lini are gonna do today.

*crosses fingers for something good*

TB, out.

I should just shut my cake hole...

Ok, so my powers of prognostication need a little work. I did NOT see this coming!

I thought I had this one pegged and in the bag. Seriously. I was so sure that the vision I saw while taking my morning shit was the front page of the Edmonton Journal for tomorrow and I could have sworn the headline read "Hemsky, Hero in Nashville!"

I guess it was "zero"...not "hero".

Honestly...where was the kid tonight? Wow. Everytime he touched the puck it was a turnover or a botched stick handling move. Not cool.

Now the Preds are tied with us in the standings. FUCK!

Poo, Sam and Cole played a stellar game though. Gotta love that.

But man, was I wrong. Wrong wrong wrong.

At least we got a point...right?

...whatever...and to think that I spent 3 days making that cool AVP photoshop thingy too....gah.

Love,

The Towel Boy (aka Sylvia Browne...send me money and I'll let you talk to your dead aunt)

AVP - Ales Vs. Predators

Big game tonight.

Huge.

Collossal interstellar battle.  Good vs. Evil.  Ales vs. Predators.

The preds currently sit one big comfy point behind us in the log jammed Western Conference standings.  This is yet another one of those proverbial "4 point" games.  

The Oilers appear to be floundering somewhat of late.  They haven't put forth a solid full 60 minute effort in...well...I'm too lazy to remember.  What I can remember off the top of my head is that they got lucky against Minnie last Saturday and had Rollie steal the show, they laid up a stinker against the BJ's and almost had Rollie steal the show, they got lucky against the Bolts and got an empty netter to make the score look much better than it actually was and of course they blew a 3rd period lead with just over a minute to go against the Flames - only to blow the shootout with ZERO shots on net.  ZERO.  The SHOOTOUT.  Skater + Goalie + Puck.  ZZZZzzero shots. 

Anyways, I think the Oilers are gonna win tonight.  4-2.  Hemmer with the strong game.  We need a big game out of Hemmer.  I think he's gonna bring it.  He seems to like the road games.

Towel Boy

R-O-L-A-I-D-S spells "OILERS WIN"

With my pilgrimage complete I arrived home somewhat road weary, but relieved.  Afterall, I had just travelled thousands of kilometers over land and sea to catch the Mighty Oil win a game in person.

After unloading the dog sled, the kid, the wife, the luggage and the 543 flat pack boxes from IKEA, I settled back into my Oilers themed PJ's and Housecoat and went down to the 5th subterranian layer of TBHQ and sat down to watch the game that I had just attended only 24 hours earlier.

Why? Cuz I wanted to see if I could find myself on TV mostly. I could see the back of my head on TV...AND I made it on the Jumbotron during the game too...thanks, mostly, to my fake boobs. 

I also wanted to PVR the game cuz when you view a game in person you miss all those little nuances that make a TV broadcast from CBC such a delight. Nuances like Scott Oake fumbling with preamble for 139 seconds to ask a one liner question and the likes of Mark n' Marc fumbling with player's names and also their illfated attempts to call the play.   "Dwayne Rolofson" anyone?  Straight up quality broadcasting is what I'm all about.

What a game I was at!!!  Well, alright, the win was a nice touch but there were some issues and/or points of concern:

• Sam Gagner can't buy a goal and is in real danger of losing the scoring race with Zack Stortini.  I believe Zack has cut Sam's lead in half now.  6 for Sam.  5 for Zack.  *shakes head*  Sam had some nice looks at the net though and almost sneaked in a nice backhand off the rush.
  
  
• Three shots on goal in the third had me looking for a beer vendor that would sell me a Nyquil chaser for my beer to help calm me down.
  
  
• Dustin Penner looked like he was wearing a parachute out there. I guess MacT saw it too, cuz it didn't take him long to slap The Red Ox on the top line
  
  
• Can Rollie honestly play every game from here to the end? He did look pretty good out there though.
  
  
• 17 minutes during intermission isn't enough time to get out of your seat, line up to get out of the seating area, find a bathroom, relieve yourself, wash your hands, go to a food vendor, stand in line, wait, keep standing in line, wait some more, order your food and beer, wait some more, show your ID to the 19 year old kid working the counter, get your food, slap some condiments on it and  run back to your seat.  I missed Zack's sweet snipe cuz of that.  I had to watch it from the stairwell.  :(
  
  
• I hope Moreau's eye isn't permanently damaged.  It didn't look good.  A guy like Moreau would play with missing limbs and when you see him squirming on the ice in pain...you know it's bad.
  
  
• Sitting in front of two doctors and having to listen to them debate the pros and cons about buying either a Lotus, a Maseratti or an Aston Martin all while the play is going on can be somewhat trying.  They also had a nice convo about the winter cars they've had and which ones were better: the Hummer, the Range Rover or the Porche Cayenne.  *rolls eyes*

In all, I think the Oilers played a good physical, hard nosed game for about half of the game.  The other half they were on their heels and let the Wild take the play to them.  They owe this win to Rollie though...the old man's a gamer.  I liked a bit of what I saw in terms of effort but a complete 60 minutes is going to be required from here on out...from every player.  Nobody can be allowed to take even one shift off.  Not even the nice usher lady in section 120...yeah...you remember now lady?  Remember letting me down into the club section without checking my ticket?  Yah...that kinda stuff won't fly coming down the stretch.  Shape up or ship out.

TB, out