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“There’s a lot of teams…you take out the number one goaltender on an NHL roster, you never can replace normally a legitimate number one goaltender, whether it’s Brodeur or Khabibulin or Luongo or things like that so…we have two people in there that have proven they can play.”

-Steve Tambellini, the GM of your Edmonton Oilers

I get that he can’t bury anyone and say “Yeah, well we’re dead. JDD and DD are nightmares.” The problem is that there’s mouthing platitudes that your deeds reveal you don’t believe - see MacT’s vote of confidence late last year - and then there’s actually acting like you believe what you’re saying. Kudos to the assembled knights of the keyboard for not laughing out loud at the suggestion that Khabibulin belonged in a group with Brodeur and Luongo. Boo for not asking him whether he made a mistake running with an injury-prone Khabby and guys who have not, no matter what he says, “proven they can play.”

It’s going to be a long, long season.

Best story I’ve heard in a long time: With Vancouver holding a 2-0 lead over Detroit in the 2002 Stanley Cup playoffs, Brendan Morrison lined up for a faceoff against Steve Yzerman. Morrison said Yzerman smiled and told him, “We’ve got you right where we want you.” The Red Wings would win four straight, eliminate the Canucks and take the Cup.

As related by Elliotte Friedman. Hopefully the next time he’s interviewing members of the 05-06 Oilers, he asks whether Yzerman had anything to say on the ice. I’ll bet he did, although it probably makes for a lousy story that doesn’t move the Yzerman deification angle forward. I just can’t get enough of watching Yzerman flat-footed on this goal:

After Mike Keane and “Go home, it’s over”, Yzerman might be my most loathed Oiler opponent of the aughties. It’s not even because he was particularly scary on the ice or an Oiler killer - I just got so bloody sick of hearing about him.

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Scoring Chances for NHL Game Number 20365

After an increasingly hostile exchange with my webhost, I think I’ve got the site working again. Any problems, please email me at mc79hockey at gmail dot com. For all your webhosting needs, do not use whoever my site provider, which basically acted like I was crazy until I said that I was getting complaints from everyone and that either I and a bunch of people have suddenly forgotten how the internet works or the problem was on their end. At that point I get a cryptic email saying: ” We have updated web server Intrusion firewall rule to fix the issue” and things started to work again. For the love of god, do not use www.canadianwebhosting.com.

Some quick thoughts from a terrible week for the Oilers:

Forget the playoffs: As of this writing, the Oilers have 23 points in 27 games. They can basically forget about the playoffs. 93 points (which looks to be a decent estimate of the cutline as there are more three point games this year) would require a 104 point pace over the remaining 55 games. It’s over. Before the start of December.

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Scoring Chances for NHL Game Number 20350

Scoring Chances for NHL Game Number 20336

Seen on the Oilers website:

It became a sort of religion for me: blaze and watch “The Boys on the Bus” or any number of Gretzky profiles. And maybe I was just blazing too often, or maybe I simply needed someone/something to look up to for a change - someone or something that had nothing to do with my work/world. Whatever the reason, this quarter century old legendary hockey club started playing a HUGE role in my daily life.

Now I just assumed that this was someone in hockey operations or marketing talking about their approach over the past three years but it turns out that it’s a Kevin Smith interview. I’m a big fan of Smith’s earlier work (particularly Clerks and Chasing Amy), although it pains me to say that nothing he’s done since Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back has worked for me. With that said (and with the acknowledgment that I’m all for legalizing marijuana and don’t care what Smith puts into his body), I’m a little surprised that they’re comfortable so publicly associating themselves with Smith - his stuff is pretty spectacularly vulgar and druggy. I first watched Clerks with some friends in high school at a friend’s house. His dad, a great guy and a card carrying Peace Country guy, sat down to spend some quality time with the lads. Then this little exchange happened:

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I’ve been hung up on the faceoffs in the games I’ve seen so far this year and last night was no different. I kind of had a sense that things weren’t going well when I was at the game in Buffalo, Stortini was taking draws and when I checked Lowetide’s site after the game, nobody seemed too aghast about it. When Stortini takes faceoffs with Cogliano and Moreau on the ice and it doesn’t draw a comment, you start to feel that maybe the fanbase is starting to feel a little beaten down by it all.

Watching the game tonight, the fact of Horcoff not taking faceoffs was pretty glaring to me as well. Since he returned from his shoulder injury, he’s been sharing his faceoff responsibility to Dustin Penner. Horcoff took 7 to Penner’s 17 in Atlanta, 10 to Penner’s 16 in Columbus, 15 apiece against Colorado and then 1 to Penner’s 18 tonight. This is shades of 2007-08, when Penner assuming some of Horcoff’s faceoff responsibilities was a harbinger of the end of Horcoff’s season.

* * *

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Scoring Chances for NHL Game Number 20324

Something I’ve always wondered about…why would anyone throw a knee on knee hit intentionally? Even if you have no respect for the safety of the other players on the ice, who wants to risk their own knee? I’ve always thought these sorts of plays were largely instinctive, and should be treated as such.

What am I missing?