Oilers go Down to Anderson

The Oilers managed to get 41 shots last night, something they don't do often, against a Florida team that had won 4 of their last five. After last night it is now 5 of their last 6.

The story last night was Anderson. The goaltender for Florida who has been around the league for a fair while but just now is starting to make a bit of noise. In place of Vokoun last night Anderson made all 41 saves to post a shut-out and steal a game his team didn't look like it was going to win.

As far as the Oilers go I'm not angry at the loss. I'm not even that frustrated, the bottom line is that we played well. Probably our most complete game yet. All teams lose, and sometimes the best team loses, and I think that was the case last night.

There has been some debate over whether Schremp should have been benched in place of Gagner, in fact a few comments I read on the OMB were quite ridiculous, a lot of people seem to think this was a bad move. The main argument here seems to be that Schremp was a point per game, Gagner cannot say the same. I just want to say one thing: Schremp had a point per game which totalled... Let's see... 3. Yes, that's right, three points. He's played three games. As of today he's played four this season in total and he did not look like anything special last night. Now, do not get me wrong, I like Schremp, I think he'll do well in the NHL when he gets a legitimite chance; but Gagner had a decent game last night so why wouldn't MacT try Gagner with Cogliano in the third to see if they could rekindle some of their chemistry? Makes sense to me.

I would like to note that had I been the one making the decision (which is somewhat irrelavent because obviously I'm not) I would have benched Pouliot instead of Schremp. But I think we all know why Pouliot, the defensive forward, got ice time instead of Schremp last night. I'll give you a hint: it's not because he's a better player.

In other news Petr Sykora finally got his first hat-trick in a 9-2 thumping by the Penguins on the Islanders last night. I just want to say a big congratulations to Petr, personally I wish you were still playing for the Oilers but we can't always get what we want I suppose.