The Boys On The Bus

Since there is no NHL hockey to watch right now and the new arena initiative is being badly bungled, why not escape to a simpler time and place?

A NEW HOPE

I am awakened by the first sign of winning.


Ryan Smyth is back where he belongs (imo he should have never left in the first place) to help Tom Renney, Shawn Horcoff, Ales Hemsky, Ryan Whitney, and Tom Gilbert mentor the next generation of Edmonton Oilers. Make no mistake, this team is being built around Taylor Hall, Jordan Eberle, and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins. A promising core of young players already surrounds them in Sam Gagner, Magnus Paajarvi-Svensson, Gilbert Brule, Linus Omark, Andrew Cogliano, Ladislav Smid, Theo Peckham, Taylor Chorney, and Jeff Petry. Free agency yielded a potential hidden gem stud D-Man in Cam Barker; some sand and grit in big agitating winger Ben Eager and even bigger, nasty D-Man Andy Sutton; a two-way center that can actually win face-offs and help on the PK in Eric Belanger; and Darcy Hordichuk, a tough-as-nails enforcer, who is as comfortable taking a regular shift as he is sitting in the penalty box or the press box. Devan Dubnyk may yet prove to be a serviceable NHL goaltender, and the Nikolai Khabibulin signing is looking more and more like a strategic decision to guarantee multiple lottery picks while creating the optical illusion of attempting to ice the best team possible.

The organization is at the roster limit with 50 contracts and brimming with talented prospects ready to step up and take anyone's roster spot should they falter. Watch out for Teemu Hartikainen, Anton Lander, Chris Vande Velde, Tyler Pitlick, Curtis Hamilton, Alex Plante, Colten Teubert, Martin Marincin, Oscar Klefbom, and David Musil.

The lines and pairings for this season might look something like this:

Gagner-Smyth-Hemsky
RNH-Hall-Eberle
Horcoff-Paajarvi-Omark
Belanger-Eager-Jones

Whitney-Barker
Smid-Gilbert
Peckham-Sutton

Dubnyk
Khabibulin

Press Box Brigade: Hordichuk, Cogliano, Brule

My bet is that we see some trades and that RNH goes back to junior unless he absolutely forces his way onto the team during training camp. Assuming even average goaltending, good health, and continued progress from the core kids, this team should at least contend for a playoff spot this year, possibly finding a way to sneak in if it all starts finally to come together.

Next summer brings a ton of cap room and yet more hope. Besides the core living up to their promise, the supporting cast needs to pan out, and a stud blueliner and clutch goaltending need to appear before the Edmonton Oilers can really take the next steps toward winning and then consistently contending for the Stanley Cup.

That said, so far this has been the best summer to be an Oiler fan since 2005.

YA-HOO!

About 15 years ago, I made a bet for $1,000.00 with a friend of mine who is a rabid Flames fan that the Oilers would win a Stanley again before the Flames ever did. It seems my money is safe for at least another year. Then again, so is his. In fact, neither team is going to get a sniff at that trophy for at least a few years, so both "Big Tom" and I can spend our money on other things like family vacations, mortgage payments, and vet bills.

I have been mostly silent throughout this NHL season, as the Edmonton Oilers players, coaches, management, and ownership combined to put out what can only be described as the worst on-ice product in my more than 30 years of being a fan. The term "City of Champions" has never before been more of a punch-line. Living in Calgary, I cannot articulate how lame it has become mouthing the words "Taylor Hall" and pointing out that the Oilers are at least 2 years ahead of the Flames on the rebuild. Nearly everyone I know in this city is a Flames fan, and they have with few exceptions been relentless in rubbing salt in my wounds whilst continually jumping on and off the bandwagon for their own old and slow band of skill-deprived knuckle-draggers.

Last night, the Calgary Flames were officially eliminated from any chance of playoff contention.

Today is a good day. I will enjoy it.

Dewey Defeats Truman

I simply do not have the words to express right now my complete and utter sense of disillusionment and dismay with the NHL, its players, and the once-proud Edmonton Oiler hockey franchise.

The mood in Calgary today is one of celebration and hope. While there is the expected amount of gloating, finger-pointing, and trash-talk going around relative to the polar opposite situations in which the Edmonton Oilers and the Calgary Flames now find themselves, one of the things that is really freaking me out is that there is also a lot of smug condescension, and even a large and genuine outpouring of sympathy for the Oilers and the city of Edmonton. Some of Flames Nation is laughing at us, but most of them seem to actually feel sorry for us.

Wow. This sucks.

Dispatches from Mordor Part 1

And I thought 2004 was rough.

It was.

In fact, the Calgary Flames improbable run to the Stanley Cup Finals that season likely took years off of my life.

It took nearly as many years off my life as the Edmonton Oilers similar, but heartbreakingly disappointing run to the Stanely Cup Finals two years later.

Now this.

So this is what feels like to live in the 9th Circle of Hell.

Jay Bouwmeester is now a Calgary Flame.

Next year he will be wearing the Flaming Gay C along with the likes of Dion Phaneuf, Robin Regehr, Jarome Iginla, and Mikka Kiprussoff. The Calgary Flames just took another step closer to winning another Stanley Cup. Just when I thought their small window was once again closing, Darryl Sutter found a way to keep it open for one more year.

OK, so apparently Darryl Sutter may have went golfing with Jay Bouwmeester's dad the other day, much like he allegedly did around this time last year with Curtis Glencross's dad. Hmmm...

Tony Gallagher of the Vancouver Province did a pretty good job the other day of summing up my feelings on Mr. Sutter's general approach of late to managing his hockey club. Although the piece is from primarily a Canucks POV, I think Oiler fans can certainly empathize or at least feel equally bitter. I do.

http://www.faceoff.com/hockey/teams/vancouver-canucks/story.html?id=1741068&add_feed_url=http://www.faceoff.com/scripts/SP6Atom.aspx?id=894638

Yesterday on The Fan 960 Sports Talk Radio in Calgary, the hosts discussed Mr. Sutter's lack of popularity among other NHL General Managers dating back to several trades and free agent acquisitions ago, including the aforementioned signing of Curtis Glencross (or GlenX as he is apparently now known), the burying of salary in the minor leagues during the stretch run, and a slightly suspicious seemingly one-sided trade with New Jersey which allowed the Devils to move up in the first round last weekend (compensation for signing Brent Sutter as head coach perhaps?). During the broadcast it was mentioned also that several NHL General Managers have approached Gary Bettman and the NHL in the past few months to complain that the Calgary Flames are over the salary cap.

And perhaps the greatest irony is that the Bouwmeester deal apparently was consummated earlier this evening in Bouwmeester's hometown of Edmonton.

City of Champions?

Please.

City of Chumps might be more accurate - especially if Danny Heatley refuses to waive his no trade clause. What a humiliating mess that will be - the latest in what has been a series of many.

If the deal does go through, then the Oilers will have finally landed a sniper the likes of which has not been seen in Edmonton (playing for the home team anyway) since the glory years. If you go by the old and overused truism "whichever team received the best player won the trade" then the Oilers may well come out on top in this deal in the end, but they gave up an awful lot of youth and talent and development, leaving the fan base scratching their collective heads and maybe even feeling as if they have been sold a bit of a bill of goods for the past few seasons.

I can see moving Dustin Penner and his inflated contract, but it does amount to basically admitting failure with the forays into the RFA market a few years ago. Put another way, it essentially admits that Brian Burke was right after all, which really pisses me off.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. "Ladislav Smid is going to be a superstar." Watching him come into his own in Ottawa is going to hurt given all of the "development" Oiler fans have had to put up with for the past few years.

The one that absolutely kills me is Cogliano. So what if he can't win a faceoff to save his life. This kid is going to be great. He was a big part of the hope for the future we all bought into when we thought the team was rebuilding. Now he's gone.

Heatley had better be good. I mean really good. 100 points good. And Hemsky, too. And Heatley had better want to play in Edmonton. And Steve Tambellini had better prove to be some kind of evil genius wizard Jedi tomorrow in terms of having several things up his sleeve to address the salary cap, the Center position, goaltending, and winning NOW!

Bring on the Battle of Alberta, because winning now seems to be what the Flames are gearing up to do.

1979

Shakedown 1979, cool kids never have the time

On a live wire right up off the street

You and I should meet

Junebug skipping like a stone

With the headlights pointed at the dawn

We were sure we'd never see an end to it all

And I don’t even care to shake these zipper blues

And we don’t know

Just where our bones will rest

To dust I guess

Forgotten and absorbed into the earth below

Double cross the vacant and the bored

They’re not sure just what we have in the store

Morphine city slipping dues down to see

That we don’t even care as restless as we are

We feel the pull in the land of a thousand guilts

And poured cement lamented and assured

To the lights and towns below

Faster than the speed of sound

Faster than we thought we'd go, beneath the sound of hope

Justine never knew the rules,

Hung down with the freaks and the ghouls

No apologies ever need be made, I know you better than you fake it

To see that we don’t care to shake these zipper blues

And we don’t know just where our bones will rest

To dust I guess

Forgotten and absorbed into the earth below

The street heats the urgency of sound

As you can see there’s no one around

("1979", The Smashing Pumpkins)

Ah, 1979. Disco reigned supreme. Alien and Apocalypse Now played in movie theatres alongside  Star Trek: The Motion Picture, the Amiteyville Horror, The Jerk, Meatballs, and The Muppet Movie. Joe Clark was Prime Minister, and then he wasn't. 

A young Pat Quinn took the reigns of the Philadelphia Flyers for his first full season behind the bench as an NHL head coach. He would go on to win that season the first of his two Jack Adams Awards as the NHL Coach of the Year.

After appearing in only one game during his rookie season the year before, Steve Tambellini was working hard on his conditioning back home in Trail B.C. during the off-season in an effort to make the roster of the New York Islanders, the prevailing hockey dynasty of the time. He would go on that year to play in 45 regular season games, scoring 5 Goals and adding 8 Assists for 13 Points to go with 4 PIM and no playoff appearances, but good enough for a Stanley Cup Ring just the same. He would later be traded in mid-season in 1980-81 to the Colorado Rockies.

The Edmonton Oilers joined the National Hockey League for the 1979-80 season along with fellow WHA teams Hartford Whalers, Quebec Nordiques, and Winnipeg Jets. Of these four teams, the Oilers are the last one standing. The others are the forerunners of Carolina Hurricanes, Colorado Avalanche, and Phoenix Coyotes.

The NHL Expansion Draft took place on June 13, 1979 with the Oilers able to retain Wayne Gretzky via a priority selection. The 1979 NHL Entry Draft took place on August 9 (an interesting date for Oiler fans, to be sure), 1979 at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal, Quebec. It is generally considered one of the deepest draft classes on record, featuring in the first round future hall-of-famers like Mike Gartner, Ray Bourque, and Michel Goulet. 

With the 21st Pick Overall in the 1st Round General Manager Glen Sather and Chief Scout Barry Fraser selected from the Quebec Remparts the first English-speaking captain of a QMJHL team, a blue-chip defenceman named Kevin Lowe.

In the 2nd Round of the 1979-80 NHL Entry Draft, Sather and Fraser traded down to acquire Dave Semenko from the Minnesota North Stars. The GM/Scouting tandem would strike gold again with the 62nd Pick Overall in the 3rd Round (from Minnesota) when they selected from the Saint Albert Saints of the AJHL  a solid two-way centre with a mean streak named Mark Messier.

 

In the 4th Round of the 1979-80 NHL Entry Draft, Sather and Fraser selected from the Burnaby Winter Club, the University of Denver, and the Canadian National Team, a rugged and speedy scoring RW named Glenn Anderson.

I was six years old in 1979. It is the first time I really watched hockey on television and followed the fortunes of my heroes in the newspaper and on the radio, as the speedy and skilled group of youngsters put together a dramatic late-season winning streak to make the playoffs in their first NHL season. My heart broke when they were swept in three games by guess who? Pat Quinn's Philadelphia Flyers.

A year later, I would again celebrate the Oilers fortunes as Jari Kurri, Paul Coffey, and Andy Moog joined the ranks of my heroes, and Wayne Gretzky continued to set records as a teenager. The young Oilers would go on to stun the hockey world by sweeping in three games the heavily -favoured Habs, before pushing the New York Islanders Stanley Cup Champion Dynasty juggernaut to six games.

I'm not sure what any of this means other than here I sit, 30 years later, looking forward to this weekend's NHL Entry Draft and toward the future...  

Craig, YOU'RE FIRED!

Well, so much for Steve Tambellini and Craig MacTavish working together to turn over the roster...

After watching the press conference, I think it's pretty clear that the new boss  is less than impressed with more than a few of the players on the roster. I found it particularly interesting when he said, "This does not absolve the players for their performance or lack thereof..."

Maybe it was the emotion in Steve Tambellini's voice, but something tells me all of this should make for a very  interesting summer.

Heads are gonna roll...

And in case you're worried about Craig MacTavish, don't. He has faced in his lifetime much more serious and difficult situations than this, including this pummeling...

Like he said at the time, "It's a little embarrassing, but what can I say? It's part of the game...It's a tough situation for me, but I guess you just have to man up and take it."

Amen to that.

Thank you Craig MacTavish.

And good luck.

You might just win another Stanley Cup before these Oilers.

MacTavish: "There Were A Lot Of Nights Where As A Coach I Had To Ask For More And The Tank Was Pretty Empty"

MacT looks and sounds like a man who loves his job and wants to succeed. I'm not so sure he's going anywhere, or that there is another coach out there who is a better solution for this franchise. If ownership and the management team shares my opinion,  then the next few days and weeks and months should be very interesting, as MacTavish basically called out the players and questioned the player procurement strategy. 

If MacT does not resign or is not fired in the next week, I'd say there is a really good chance of him working together with Tambellini to turn over this roster yet again. My bet is Penner stays. Nilsson goes, maybe too Cogliano, Souray, Staios, and/or Visnovsky. Both Pouliot and Brodziak are on the bubble and on notice. JFJ is here to stay, at least for a little while. Schremp is done. Gagner is a future captain of this team. Brule, Stone, Nash, Eberle, Plante, and Potulny all will get a long look at training camp. Roloson and Kotalik are both far from being sure bets to re-sign. Marion Gaborik, Marion Hossa, Jay Bouwmeester, Martin Biron, and Mathieu Garon are all key free agents who will be on the Oilers' and every other team's radar.

The Oilers will be involved in at least One Big Trade and One Big Free Agent Signing this summer.