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Double-dipping on "Hide and Seek" don't care great song
Remember when the mighty Edmonton Oilers won five Stanley Cups in seven years? The Oilers themselves don't: of their six promising young stars, only Sam Gagner and Jordan Eberle were alive prior to the Oilers' 1990 championship, and Eberle only by like a week. Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Nail Yakupov weren't even alive for the two Penguins championships that followed. I was merely alive but unaware of hockey for the '87, '88, '90 wins. The realization that you're watching people who are younger and more successful than you is a major turning point in the life of a sports fan, I feel. For me, it didn't really hit until top draft picks started being younger than my little sister.
Anyway, now that we're done ruminating on old age, the Blackhawks have to play the third of a three-in-four while the Oilers begin a road trip after a day off and a shootout win against the Coyotes. During the lockout, a bunch of Oilers players--most notably Eberle and rogue Ducks prospect Justin Schultz--went on assignment to Oklahoma City and tore the ever-loving shit out of the AHL. In regular-season NHL play, however, the Oilers have been struggling like a man in a straitjacket. They have dazzling speed, but no finish: at five-on-five, they have only 16 goals in 17 games and are being outscored at almost a 2-to-1 ratio (.53). That's astoundingly bad, especially from a team that was projected to fly up and down the ice winning and losing 7-6 like the Oilers of old. Instead, they routinely get shelled in the offensive end, then get undressed going back the other way, where they mostly rely on a resurgent Devan Dubnyk, whom I once described as "remarkably goaltender-like" but has been the only thing separating the Oilers from first-Capitals-season levels of badness. And that's really scary for an organization that drafted first overall three times in a row. Canadian TV rights are up for bids pretty soon, and when the Oilers matter (more than usual), the league can charge a lot to bring quality hockey programming to the folks up in the oilsands with money to burn. That helps everyone -- it's a common misconception that the Canadian and American broadcast deals are segregated. So even though we all want the win tonight, you've gotta want to see the Oil turn this thing around and be a league power again. Better them than Dale Tallon and his perpetually rebuilding shitshow in the Everglades, right?
Taylor Hall was out against Phoenix and will be out tonight with a suspension for a knee-on-knee hit that fucked Cal Clutterbuck up hard. Captain Shawn Horcoff has been day-to-day for weeks with a concussion from an unpunished post-whistle headshot by putative gentleman Shane Doan. Ryan Nugent-Hopkins must be battling an injury and not letting it on because he only has one goal on the year.
Numbers:
Hawks are 15-0-3 inflated, 13-0-5 in 65 minutes, 27.8 expected points (about 3 above)
Oilers are 7-7-3, 5-9-3 in 65 minutes, 13.89 expected points (less than a point below)
Hawks are 4th in goals scored at 3.111, BEST IN THE LEAGUE IN GOALS ALLOWED at ONE! POINT! ONE! SEVEN! EIGHT! GOALS PER GAME, it thus follows that they're also leading the league in differential at 1.333
Oilers are 27th in goals scored at 2.235, 16th in goals allowed at 2.647, 22nd in differential at -.412
Hey, I'm going to be business-trippin' in lovely South Florida from the 28th to the 9th, so I probably won't be able to do game threads! Someone else will have to pick song titles/lyrics tangentially related to opposing teams (the indier, the better!) and then do some basic scouting and arithmetic for the games with the Blues, Jackets, Wings, Wild, Avs, and Avs again. I TAKE PRIDE IN MY THREADS, so don't let me down.
Oh and those blowouts to the Oilers last year never happened, don't even think about them.
_________________ Molly Lambert wrote: The future holds the possibility to be great or terrible, and since it has not yet occurred it remains simultaneously both.
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