So I'm Sitting At Work And...

And I realize how utterly boring my life is right now.  What with no hockey, the Eskies only playing once a week if that, no major assignments to hand in, no bills to pay, and after I finish the book I'm currently reading I will have to resort to re-reading novels I own, some of which I've probably already re-read once or twice.

I need a plan...  Something that will keep me occupied for hours at a time.  It wouldn't be so bad except I have absolutely nothing to do at work for the 5-6 hours a day that I'm here.  And combining that with the fact that I work 6 days a week makes a seriously bored existence...

A CFL Update.

So my favourite CFL team the Eskies is currently 3rd in the west and will be going into Sunday's game with a 2-1 record. Toronto, the team we will be facing for a second straight game after we obliterated them 47-28 last Thursday, comes in at second in the east with a 1-2 record. Apparently the East is sucking a little this season as their first place Montreal Allouettes [hate, hate, HATE them] have the identical record to ours, while the western division's leader, the Sask. Roughriders are undefeated.

Calgary coming in second in the west with a 3-1 record and BC bringing up the rear with a 1-2 record. In the east Hamilton is third with a 1-3 record, while Winnipeg has yet to win a game in the basement.

So the standings look like this...

WEST

Saskatchewan 3-0; Calgary 3-1; Edmonton 2-1; BC 1-2.

EAST

Montreal 2-1; Toronto 1-2; Hamilton 1-3; Winnipeg 0-3.

Does Not Compute...

So about three weeks into the top 24, several months into the competition (from audition to Wednesday night) and approximately one month after he became my favourite contestant ever to grace Canadian Idol; Gary Morissette was booted swiftly from the CI stage in favor of some severely less talented vocalists with smooth voices, childish tones, and performance styles that will have you half way through your REM cycle by the time you get to the chorus.

I can't really say I'm surprised that he was eventually voted off, as my favourites have not been the winner of any 'Idol' show to date. I was however surprised at how soon he left, I would have thought at least top 6 or 7, at the VERY least.

The fact is that Canada got it wrong, and not just in Gary's case either. The fact that the eldest Pigott brother, Oliver, who was quite possibly one of the most sincere singers I have witnessed in my lifetime, also left that night was an utter travesty, the same could be said for the departure of Omar who's vocal range and smooth transitions from chest voice to falsetto were a joy to listen to.

Not saying all of the top ten don't deserve to be there, but there certainly are a few whom I am less than impressed are there ahead of those previously mentioned.

A complete and disgusting, but not entirely unpredictable failure by Canada this week.

That is all.

PS: Planning on making a road trip down to see his band "Unknown Culprits" play, if you want to check them out they're on MySpace.

Unknown Culprits MySpace Page

Oil Sign Strudwick.

So regardless of the age of the picture to the left, although by looking at the size of the jerseys I think we can all assume that this picture is a minimum of a season old, it seems that the Oil have signed a fighter. I realize that this post is a few days late but the newest player to be donning the Oil silks this coming October will be Jason Strudwick.

Now correct me if you want but browsing through this guy's career stats it seems to me that we just got a much older Matt Greene... 8 years older to be exact. Similar point production, which with all things considered is next to nothing, similar penalty minutes, Strudwick has never played an entire 82 games, neither has Greener but at least he has come to within 4 games of a full season. Don't know how I feel about this signing, although upon the mandatory youtube review of incoming players I have found him to be a relatively decent fighter, maybe that was Klowe's motivation?

Also of notability is that he's a fan favourite of sorts, quite the character from what I've heard.

Colour Me Whatever Colour Means I'm Not Surprised.

So after celebrating a birthday party, not mine but an excellent friend of mine's, and having a rough time sleeping on a couch in the basement, surprisingly comfortable for a couch but for some reason I'd taken on the qualities of an insomniac; I find myself waking up to the sound of my phone vibrating on a wood table with 'TSN BREAKING NEWS ALERT ... Jaromir Jagr signs two-year deal with Avangard Omsk of Russian league... MORE AT TSN.CA'

While my stomach did not drop a little like it did when I received this text: 'TSN BREAKING NEWS ALERT ... Marian Hossa has signed a one year, $7.4 million deal with the Red Wings ... MORE AT TSN.CA' I did have to suppress a slight groan of frustration to prevent myself from waking the Birthday Girl, which I ended up doing anyway.

So now I guess my question is...

Now what?

Two Camps for Die-Hard Oil Fans.

It appears fans who 'Bleed Copper 'N Blue' will be members of one of two camps tonight; let me lay them out for you.

Camp # 1: Fans in this camp either stayed up all night last night on the Oiler message board discussing the idea of Hossa or had a rather restless sleep involving nightmares of Hossa signing with the Calgary Flames/Vancouver Canucks, the reality of it all being nearly as bad but not quite there. These fans will be spending another night either on the message board, refreshing TSN/Sportsnet every 3-10 seconds or both.

Camp # 2: Members of this camp also had a long night last night either on the message boards or dreaming of themselves kicking in their television screen after Pierre Mcguire explains the ins and outs of Hossa's new deal with one of the teams in the Nortwest division for the Nth time, after which Glenn Healy was supposed to list and describe in coloured detail the teams he thought were going to be good and which teams he thought were going to be a terrible disappointment. And lets face it; no one wants to listen to that. These fans differ from the first camp in that they will be spending the night in bed attempting to get some sleep, some probably actually falling asleep only to wake up with a terrible empty feeling and rush to their computer while turning on TSN or Sportsnet depending on whether Connected or Sportscenter is on in desperate need of information. Some of these fans will then look at the clock and realize that it is only 3:00 AM and likely there hasn't been much progress on the Jagr front.

Either way tonight will be another long night in Oil Country.

I don't know which camp I'm in, but I won''t be getting much sleep tonight.

EDIT: According to recent reports we could be waiting for as long as a week for Jagr's decision, here's hoping thats not the case. It may be more than one long night in Oil Country.

No News So Let's Discuss 1-2 Day Old Leftovers.

It has recently come to my attention upon discussing the Pits for Cole trade that I should maybe take another look at Cole. Carolina fans seem to have a sort of love for him akin to Edmonton's love for Smytty... Okay so maybe not quite that strong, but pretty freakin' close. It seems that he's got some wheels and is a pretty big body on the ice, garners about 50-60 pts a year inclusive in that stat are 20+ goals per year. Seems like he's got a lot of character, so I am a little more excited to see him on the ice next year.

Which line though?

Here's the options:

1- He plays on the first line misplacing Dustin Penner to be pushed down to the second/third line.

2-We split up the kid line and send Nilsson down to the third line.

3- We place Cole on the third line to tear it up as a scoring threat on the checking line.

Okay. I don't think we should break up the kid line. Call me crazy but I really enjoyed watching them play together last year and they were clearly better together than they were split apart. Thus if we were to do option #1 Penner would have to be put on the third line, that is in my mind [this is all opinion based] and I won't even consider option 2. So Cole or Penner on the first line? I suppose we shall have to wait and see, where's the chemistry at?

Interesting to see if we add any more players to the line-up.

Lost Out Again.

While I'm not usually one to buy into the so-called hesitation by UFA/RFA players to play/live in Edmonton, its getting a little difficult to remain with the opinion that Edmonton is a great hockey city and it isn't the city that is the problem when a player signs in another city for notably less than what Edmonton was said to have been offering him. Honestly I don't have any hatred towards Hossa, he is still a great player, I'm just frustrated with the fact that for the past couple years we have had some problems signing big name players, and regardless of whether it is actually because they don't want to play in Edmonton, situations like this certainly don't silence such rumours.

I'm actually pretty comfortable with not signing Hossa, obviously he was not going to play in Edmonton for the same price so there's no sense being upset about it. Right after I heard about it I was a little more upset, but now I'm just wondering what move we're going to make next.

See you in a bit; hopefully with some better news to discuss.

First Post Ever...

Ah yes, well then to the point; I have never done this before, and to be quite frank I have an excess of opinion and to be honest I think the people I personally know are a little tired of hearing it, so I shall use this as an outlet of sorts. On to my favourite topic - The Edmonton Oilers.

So Raffi, Joni, Stolly and Greener are on their way out; actually they're already gone. I confess to being a little disappointed with the fact Greene is gone, if for nothing else than his sense of humor. I also have to admit to being moderately un-impressed with the choice to move Stoll after one lackluster season, there were a lot of questions of whether he would ever recover from his concussion, and he certainly did not silence these inquiries with last season's effort; however I think I probably would have given him another shot. That said I can't say I am at all surprised that Raffi is on the outs, and after we acquired Lubomir Visnovsky in return for Stolly and Greener I definitely was not surprised when it turned up that Joni wasn't going to return to our organization.

To be honest I can't say I know much about any of the players we received in exchange, but I do remember cursing Visnovsky's name at least a few times while the Oilers were playing the Kings last season for reasons that can only be considered good now that he is to play for my team. From what I've heard he is an offensive defensemen who is an excellent powerplay quarterback he is also said to have fairly good skating ability but somewhat lacking in defensive responsibility. Okay so let me get this straight; We traded Matt Greene, one of our few stay-at-home defensemen and one of our best two-way forwards [last season excluded] who was also one of our most reliable penalty killers as well as a quarterback on our powerplay for an offensive defensemen who is a smooth skater and loves to jump in on the play. This made no sense until Joni was traded, then obviously it was a little easier to understand. Here's hoping Ladislav can step it up this season, I know he can, I see great potential in him to be a great defensive D-man with an offensive upside and if he can be a little more like what I believe he will become that would be great. [If that made sense at all.]

Alright so lets get this out of the way: To save you from trying to figure out for yourselves which players/teams are my favourites and which ones are on the other end of the stick I'll give you a short rundown.

Teams I like:
The Edmonton Oilers - Obviously. They are who I would refer to as 'my team.' Being from the Edmonton area I am obsessed with the Oilers and if I start talking about them it takes a lot to make me stop. I watch every game with the exception of games that I am away from my house for, then I have someone stationed in front of my television sending me frequent descriptive text messages explaining the current situation in the game. My family are enablers who say they think my love of the Oil is crazy and yet still buy me Oilers things all the time.

The Pittsburgh Penguins - I don't know exactly when this liking brewed, but one day I was watching a random game just because it was on and I found myself pulling for the Pens to pull it through, they were behind at the time which leads me to believe that I began to love them mostly because of the supposed 'underdog' status they had in that particular game which reminded me of the Oilers at that particular time. They lost the game, which also reminded me of the Oil.

The Ottawa Senators - I began to like this team about three or four years back, mostly because of their playing style, I enjoy watching them play regardless of the fact that they were horrendous the last half of last season despite the strong start.

Teams I Dislike:
Vancouver Canucks - There was a time when I would have placed Calgary in the top spot, but recently Vancouver has nestled itself into that spot and they don't seem to be leaving anytime soon.

Calgary Flames - I am from Edmonton and as such I was raised to hate Calgary, or at least harbour a healthy competitive dislike. Then when I moved there for a year in primary school I actually got a reason to dislike Calgary, not that this is any knock on the city or the people who live there, the atmosphere there is just much different then it is in Edmonton.

Toronto Maple Leafs - My dad loves this team, why? I have no idea, he's from Winnipeg so he can't even say he grew up there. I personally have a serious unfounded dislike for this team, why? As I said it is an unfounded dislike, thus it has no root, I just don't like the team.

Favourite Players:
On the Oilers: Ales Hemsky, Ladislav Smid, Sam Gagner, Kyle Brodziak.

On the Penguins: Evgeni Malkin, Jordan Staal, Petr Sykora, Kris Letang.

On the Senators: Antoine Vermette, Mike Fisher.

On other teams: Sergei and Andrei Kostitsyn, Rick Nash, Mike Green, Jonathan Teows.

I'd get into players I don't like but I don't really like to pin-point certain people or players as ones that I don't like as I often won't dislike then in about a week or two.

Any way it is almost 12:00 AM so I think I shall go and sleep for a couple hours until I'm up waiting for news on the Hossa front, which I am also torn on.
I love Hossa's upsides, as there are many, but the financial end of it worries me a little but I'm sure if the deal does go through that management has a plan for the financial stuff, or maybe I'm putting to much faith in the management.

Time will tell.