Quick Second Period Notes

PK looks really good.

Our PK resembled our PKs of seasons past.  Also we took less penalties than the past couple games.  One thing is for sure.  Our PK is much better with Pisani on it.

Scoreless through 2

This is not good for us, but it's not good for the Bruins either.  This is a neutral point but but still worth mentioning.  We need to score something.

Gagner is still looking good.

Still snake-bitten, but playing strong none-the-less.  Still creating chances and making plays, hopefully he can see some reward from it soon.

Cole looks great

He was playing like a man possessed this period, there was mention that he may be double-shifting on the LW on the fourth line every so often.  Obviously MacT is noticing something in this guy, most likely his fitness level and hard working attitude.

Hemsky is still playing well and drawing penalties

Hemsky is looking more like the Hemsky we wanted to see at the beginning of the season.  He's drawing penalties and dominating on puck possession, it seems as if most of the passes he was attempting in past games he is succeeding in executing this game.

Another note is that our defensive play is much better tonight that it has been in the last few games.  <insert bid for Ladislav to play on a regular basis here>.  But seriously I think this guy needs to play, he finishes his checks and as much as people don't like his activities after the whistle so much, I quite enjoy having someone to clear the crease following the play.

Quick First Period Notes

First period is newly done, and here's what I noticed:

Shots 15-10

At one point I think we were being outshot 13-3, by the end of the period they had evened out to 15-10.  This is a good sign, though the shot clock is not always the best measure of how a game is going.  But our period was pretty darn good, leaps and bounds above last game.

Gags is good.

Gagner has been everywhere thus far.  He's creating chances, he's taking shots, he's strong on the puck and he's fore-checking.  We have nothing to worry about this kid, his time is coming.

Hemmer is good.

Hemsky has also been very noticeable thus far.  He's playing incredibly well, drawing penalties and I definitely see a break-out on the near horizon...  Perhaps later tonight.  Also, I LOVED the brief period we were treated to with the Nilsson-Gagner-Hemsky line.

We're on the PP, and the PK withstood the lone penalty kill we had.

This encompasses many things.  First, we're on the PP and it looks good.  Despite the fact that we took a penalty on the first PP (an extremely weak call if you ask me), our powerplay looks a lot better than the past three games.  Second our PK looked relatively solid as well, at least more solid than, once again,  in the past three games.  Third, we only took two penalties, one of which was an incredibly weak call, in my opinion of course, Tim Thomas was clearly out of his crease.

Perhaps more next break.

Bruins @ Oilers

The Oilers are on the ice at Rexall Place tonight playing a Bruins team that they have yet to beat since October 17th 2000.  Besides that fact the  Oilers have lost their last three games and the fans that will populate the arena tonight will be expecting that steak to be snapped. 

The Bruins are coming off a win in which they beat Atlanta 5-4, snapping their own three game losing streak.  Milan Lucic scored a hat-trick in this one, two goals of which were in the third period, the last coming with less than two minutes to play in the third.  According to Lowetide's blog post here, Milan Lucic is a machine.  I can't say I've watched him a whole lot, but if his last game is any sign of what we might be dealing with tonight I hope our defence magically got immeasurably better over the last couple nights... 

I'll be buying this one tonight, so I hope the Oilers at least show up with a good effort.  But if we lose I give you permission to blame it on the fact that I payed for the game.

Here's hopin' for a breakout game for either Hemmer or Gagner, perhaps both...  Yeah that would be nice...

Okay, Positives vs Negatives from last nights game.

Positives:

• Hemsky was flying, at least for the first period and a good chunk of the second.  I particularly noticed him several times on the powerplay resembling the force that I hope he can be.  It's only a matter of time, there will be a break-out game and soon enough Hemmer will be the dominant force we all want him to be, especially if he plays with Nilsson consistently and they develop more chemistry.  I definitely noticed a compatibility between the two of them, and it will only become more prominent the more they play together.
• Nilsson has continued his elevated level of play.  Last season I barely noticed Nilsson, perhaps it was because of the hype that followed his linemates, Gagner and Cogliano, everywhere.  But this season it seems as if he's working harder, backchecking effectively and creating chances whenever he's on the ice, and this can only be a good thing.
• Cole was absolutely flying on his natural wing, until he was ejected of course.  I look forward to seeing him play a complete game on the right side, as he is clearly more comfortable and dominant in that position.  His strength on the puck is excellent, and I think its only a matter of time until he starts to produce like we hoped he would at the start of the season.
• Our breakout and movement through the neutral zone was leaps and bounds better than the two games prior to last night.  We were giving the puck up less (we haven't lowered the giveaways quite low enough yet, but we're getting there), and our passing is getting better, there seems to be less kicking a pass from a player's skates up to his stick.
• We scored three times.  This is self explanatory, in the two games we played prior to this one we only scored once, thus three goals in one game is a vast improvement over the last two games, although 4 or 5 perhaps would have been ideal we can still win a game on 3 if we buckle down defensively.

Negatives:

• Our special teams are dismal.  The powerplay seemed to be tugging along at a decent rate early on in the season, and if we can get it back on track it won't be a worry anymore; however, our penalty-kill has been terrible all season, this past game we were running around and seemed to be breaking our box a lot in favour of chasing the puck.  Vancouver scored 4 powerplay goals on 6 opportunities, and we all know that Vancouver's powerplay is not that good (not good enough to be operating at 67% at least).  It can be said that we lost two of our best penalty killers over the summer in Reasoner and Stoll, but we need to find a way to kill these penalties.
• Which leads me to this: we took too many penalties at inopportune times, not that there really is a good time to take penalties.  Now granted, and I'm not blaming the loss on the refs by any means, some calls (Horcoff's interference call) were less than stellar, but I thought that the majority of calls made were calls that weren't outlandish at all.  We have to take less penalties, as our penalty kill is failing miserably as of late.

     Cole...  Do up your strap.  Enough said.

• Our defensive play was weak, there were too many odd man rushes coming down on Garon, and in particular on the 6th goal he was left out to dry as a 3 on 1 barrelled down on him.  Perhaps something needs to be done about poorly advised pinches, but the most notable problem is our tendency to make difficult and/or risky passes, and it seems that they always end up being picked off resulting in a chance in our end.

I actually found more positives from last game than negatives, I thought we put in a good effort for the majority of the game, although the typical phrase "we have to play for the whole 60 minutes" definitely applies here.  I look forward to hopefully watching most of the glaring negatives disappear and seeing this team become the team we thought they would be at the beginning of the season.

And so ends a streak.

The Oilers lost to the Chicago Blackhawks last night in, from what I could assume after listening to the third period, what was a terrible effort from the Oilers.  I'm sure I heard them say that if the Oilers played like they did in the third period for the rest of the game they wouldn't have been down 3-0.  Now forgive me if I'm wrong, I understand I did not watch the game, and as Chicago obviously did not score during that period it probably was better than the other two; however, from what I heard during the third period I'd think the Oilers would have had to play better than that if they had expected to win that game.

Moving on, we play again tonight against an Avalanche team that definitely did not play last night, which is something to be concerned about.  Of course we can only hope that the Oilers will come back with a-vengeance tonight, I assume that Garon will be in net tonight, which makes me happy.  The Avs are coming off a three game winning streak, so I guess we will see what happens.

On another note, how did Roli play last night?  What did those of you who watched the game or listened to the whole thing think?

Oilers @ Chicago

Tonight at 7:00 PM our beloved Oilers are on the ice against one of the few other teams in the league that are as young as we are.

Word is Roloson gets the start tonight, I'm not a big fan; that being said if we are to trade him sometime this season he has to play sometime. Hopefully he comes out with something to prove as it has also been said that he requested a trade sometime within the last month, which would mean it only benefits him to play well tonight. My only concern is if he turns the notch up to 15 tonight instead of 11 and we lose the game because of wanting it too much, resulting in poor positioning and premature reads of the play. My fingers are crossed.

Also of importance, Sam Gagner draws into the line up after a, I assume minor, lower body injury; most likely his leg or knee. This is definitely a plus, for while I enjoyed Penner's big body presence on the 'kid' line last game I definitely missed Sam's speed. Also we have to give Sam a chance to razz Pat Kane about crying on National Television don't we? (Yes, I'm a terrible person).

On the other hand it looks as if Sheldon Souray will not be gracing the ice with his presence tonight, which probably means we will see some more of Ladislav Smid if this is the case (Yay!).

I'll be missing something like the first two periods of the game tonight, and I will definitely not pay $13 to watch the final period, so I'll be listening to Rod Phillips and trying to piece together whats occuring when he loses himself, not that I don't appreciate Rod's experience.

Quick Second Period Comments

We shall do this point-form style, as there is not much time left before the third period.

-We are being outshot miserably, which is what I was afraid of, it seems that this trend continues after the preseason, this is something that must be fixed.

-We are failing at the face-off dot. This is self explanatory, I'm sure this will either be fixed or we will bring some one in to do the fixing.

-The Avalanche scored, thus tying the game. It was on a scramble of sorts, the third shot at Garon went in, I believe it was Sakic.

In short we need to do better in the third, we looked pretty good at several different times in the second, and if we can capture that more often in the third, we may be able to pull this one through.

First Period Break Check-Up

So one period of play is in the books on the Oiler's home opener, and we're up 1-0. Good right? Yeah, but we've been outshot by a count of 10-6, which is okay as we are in the lead, but it is definitely far from great.

We had a couple of good chances, one in particular that actually sent off the goal horn and I'm assuming the goal light also went on. It was an excellent chance but perhaps the goal judge needs glasses, there was no semblance of a puck behind the goal line.

The Avs also look pretty good, my heart was in my throat a couple of times throughout the period. Those of note include Sakic's 'goal,' (when I thought they were actually going to count it) and, was it Arnason? That somehow missed that wide open net? Nerves perhaps?

Shawn Horcoff said it best during the intermission interview, we need to tighten it up, less sloppy play is never a bad thing.

Perhaps I'll write more next intermission.

EDIT: The intro was amazing! The idea of the greats of the past handing down the legacy by passing the puck to the Oilers of today, leading to goals, was absolute brilliance. Not to mention that the Rod Phillips clips were perfectly blended, it would actually have been believable had the video clips not been so obviously different. Regardless, it was absolutely brilliant.

First Game-Day of the Season!

I'm so excited I think I'm literally buzzing; don't touch me or I'll zap you! But maybe you're into that kind of thing.

Hockey is officially back for Oiler fans tonight, playing against an Avs team that lost their opener to Boston. I, of course, am hoping for an Oiler win tonight, but I'll be satisfied with a solid effort so long as there is a good show of energy out-the-gate. I actually laughed a little during the pre-game interviews when Dustin Penner said that the player introductions make him nervous, something about the possibility of tripping and falling in front of about 17,000 people I suppose...

Less than two hours until puck-drop, I'm buzzing, Dustin Penner is nervous and I'm hoping that I'll be in an equally good mood following the game.

More later... Perhaps in between periods.

Mish-Mash Time.

I write to you today overflowing with happiness that my first wave of midterms has come to an end.  With relatively few bruises to my GPA I write with no worries about how these ten to twenty minutes will affect my study time.

I am hardly able to stand myself as I lay in wait for the Oilers' season to start on Sunday.  I'm excited despite the fact that Laddie Smid will not be in the starting line-up for Sunday's game, I'll say just one thing about that:  I realize that I have a little too much patience for Smid than I should, but I think it will be a grave mistake to keep him out of the line-up for too long; especially when in his place you're playing Strudwick.  Don't get me wrong, I have no qualms with Strudwick, I'm just a fan of Laddie--thus my patience.

On an incredibly positive note: I kicked the hypothetical ass of my Classics exam last night--go me!

Okay, One Last Post...

Okay so I had to mention that the Oil did win tonight bringing their preseason record to a staggeringly impressive 2-2-3. I hope you caught the sarcasm there because if you didn't I wouldn't know how to make it any more obvious than by putting these tags around the sentence <sarcasm> </sarcasm>.

In all honesty I don't know how Garon pulled this game into the win column, although by studying Rod Philips' voice levels I'm pretty sure he transcended the realm of mortal motor skills and had no business saving at least one of Dallas' shots. You know the type I speak of, the same quality that Luongo makes about 10 times a night in order to put his team into a position where they could make the playoffs but don't because there is a lack of up-front firepower. But I digress. Oil win, Eskies win, I'm catching up and I hope the preseason is not a sign of the way the regular season will go, we all know it wasn't last year.

Back to English...

A Catch-up Game...

I'll be the first to admit I've been playing a major catch-up game this past month. Hell, I haven't even been on top of my Oilers' pre-season games this year; my phone politely reminded me today at 5:00 PM that the Oil were to take on the Stars tonight at 6:00 PM. Now because I had for some reason thought that this game was tomorrow I did not make plans to do my grocery shopping earlier, say this morning or yesterday. As such I listened to the majority of the first period in my car instead of the comfort of my living room.

That is the end of it, I am getting a hold on things and finally going to keep up with everything that I have going right now. I will know when the Oilers play, and who they play against, ahead of time, I will read my English readings BEFORE my professor gets frustrated that we haven't read them, I will understand the philosophy concepts prior to partaking in the debate in class. And I will actually get work done at work, as I do have a lot of free time. Free time that I should not be spending daydreaming about the sexy guy in my Biology class or plotting my television show conquest schedule. I will spend my time getting caught up and keeping up with the flow of my life; now if you'll excuse me I have a few pages of English left.