Midnight Sun Espresso Stout

The year that I turned forty I celebrated by doing three big things. Two were planned. One was not.

Lets go backwards, shall we? Well it was just under two months to my fortieth when I came home from a Capsule victory in which I had played quite well, a two to one victory over our biggest rival, a game in which I had set up both goals with a couple of sweet passes, if I do say so myself. Then a couple of post game pints at the Communist Bar and I arrived home to find the wife into a bottle of wine and so we sat outside on our back deck and had a couple more and smoked a little and the conversation turned to the question that had been before us since the boy's arrival two years previous and that was, do we want a third kid? We had not been sure but slowly and surely, especially as things got easier with our two oldest, my wife began to warm to the idea. I wasn't sold on it but the previous summer had proven to me that we could get our old lives back once the kids got a little older so I too began to get on board. And so this night we decided that we would have a third kid. The plan was to start trying in the spring but in the heat of the moment we rolled the dice. And the rest, as they say, is history.

It was about a month later that I travelled to Edmonton for the first time to catch the Oilers. Andy Grabia, my gracious and generous host that weekend, and I attended a Saturday night game against a rebuilding Hawks' team, a bunch of kids, amongst them rookies Toews and Kane, who did not impress. Horcoff, in the middle of a run that would convince Lowe to sign him to a big extension (Horc would average just about a PPG before he went down for the year), scored the winner in the shootout. It was good fun, an enjoyable trip. Andy squired me about the town, we checked out the Golden Bears on Friday night and went to RATT, went for dinner before the game on Saturday night and then for drinks afterwards. Good times, although not exactly what Andy had planned for me. :)

And to kick off the festivities, months before, I believe it was in late June but the memories are hazy, one of my closest friends (also turning 40) and I headed down the 401 to Montreal for a long weekend.

Sweet sweet Montreal. Now the Island is probably my favourite province, although I think that if I spent any extended time in Newfoundland it might end up a push, but Montreal has to be my favourite city in Canada I think. And that's saying a lot because I've been to a lot of cities between Bonavista and Vancouver Island and I have very little bad to say about any of them.

But Montreal.

Damn.

Some day I will go into detail about that weekend, I am sure. We arrived Friday in the evening and we commenced our wander. Up and down and all around the streets of Montreal, into brewpubs and hole in the wall joints and streetside patios, drinking and smoking in the unusual early summer heat, up St. Denis to visit a friend and beers on his balcony, looking across the street at a party in the building there, a couple having sex just above the festivities, figuring that their antics, slow and easy, were unknown and unseen in the night, back down into the city, talk drifting as talk will, easy and slow between two old friends, one of those weekends that goes real slow and all of the drink that we poured into ourselves just softened the edges around us.

And in the middle of Saturday afternoon we ducked into a fancy looking joint, it was time for a drink, another one of these places all about beer. We turned down the offer of food and looked at the list of beers and both of us were immediately drawn to one in particular.

Midnight Sun Espresso Stout

All the way from the Yukon.

It was a damn big bottle, we each got a pint out of it.

Good thing because it was thirty five bucks.

Ha!

It was a very good beer, not worth thirty five dollars of course, but we wanted to drink it and we were staying in a hostel so it wasn't like we were blowing the kids' education fund. It was just one of those moments. 'We're here to celebrate. Why the fuck not?'

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Here in Ontario you can get some pretty good beers these days at the LCBO. Some quality shit from around the world and a lot of terrific beer from around Canada as well. Every day I go in I seem to find something new and more and more I see a pint bottle or maybe a little bigger than a pint going for five, six, seven dollars.

Now I buy myself a lot of damn good beers there for two and a quarter or three fifty so when I see a bottle of stout, even from a micro brewery that I know, going for six bucks then I get a little leery. There is a Winter Ale that goes for just under seven bucks; its two pints worth and a damn strong beer. It caught my fancy last year, its got a smell and taste you wouldn't believe.(I'm not a beer geek or snob by the way although I guess it sounds like it here. I just like damn good beer. I guess maybe I'm a bit of a snob in that I turn my nose up at Coors Light, say, but if you put one in front of me I'll drink the damn thing and like it so there you go).

Anyhow this Winters' Ale, I think its from Niagara Brewery, is damn good shit. A couple of those, all spices and oranges and shit (I kid you not) and I get a warm glow on. I'd better, for the price. That's just once in a while stuff.

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And now the news that Khabibulin is out with a bad back and anyone who has ever had a bad back knows its bad fucking news. I've been relatively lucky but every once in a while I get a tweak. Last week I did and for about half a day I moved at about a quarter speed. And then just as quickly as it came, it went. No idea what happened. I got out of bed wrong likely. Same as Khabibulin probably.

And anyone who has seen JDD the last two games knows that even if Tambellini is right and all will be right with the world when everyone is back healthy, this club suddenly has a problem in net.

Not that anyone saw this one coming. Jesus.

Anyhow JDD has been pretty well shit and I'm thinking another game like this and Dubnyk will get a start and at least we may get an idea about the big man.

Hopefully he doesn't get beat top shelf over and over again. How the fuck does that happen when you're six foot four. Just fucking stand there, maybe!

Anyways this horse has been beaten over and over again until its just a faint rusty smear on the road but facts are facts and for some reason folks still like to defend this crackerjack management team and their sterling record over the past half dozen seasons (That would be one playoff season in five years, btw, with this year looking iffy.) so what the hell, sure I will pile on, again.

The problem is that Tambellini invested a shitload of money and term in an aging injury prone goalie and on top of that did not bring in a veteran backup to help out when, as was certainly likely, that goalie went down. He made not one but two poor bets. He bet that Khabibulin would be worth the money and that he would stay healthy even though his recent history says otherwise. And he bet that JDD or Dubnyk would be able to step in and do the job. I guess we'll see how that goes.

Lets hope that it goes well because if it does not then even if this team as good as Steve seems to think that it is they are going to get sunk by poor goaltending. I don't put much stock in how the club was outperformed by Chicago. Chicago is way better than the Edmonton Oilers. What worries me is that JDD has looked poor these last two games. I'm thinking that this is going to cost them.

You see Steve, its okay to buy that thirty five dollar bottle of beer when you're out celebrating a milestone, its once in a lifetime, yeah?

But when you're taking care of your goaltending it might make a little more sense to take an alternative route, no? Maybe a couple of those St Peter's Cream Stout will do. Just as good and a fraction of the price. And you have two of them,

I Love Myself Some Colm Meaney

The truth about life is this. Unless you are independently wealthy or a professional athlete or in some other profession that puts you in a position where big things happen to you a lot, life is not full of big moments. Its the small moments that make life what it is.

Sure you have your wedding and the arrival of your children and your travelling to wonderful locales. You have your love affairs and your road trips, your first kiss and your first times, buying your dog and the glory when your favourite team goes on a run or a Canadian wins Olympic gold.

But for every one of those special days there are thousands of small moments that are the story of your life. Building a model helicopter with your son. Taking your daughter out for pancakes at the local joint. Taking your kids and the dog for a walk in the little ravine in your neighbourhood, showing them a tiny snake and the trees laden with snails and the wildflowers at stream's edge. Having a beer in a pub with your dad as a vicious winter storm rages outside. Enjoying a pork roast and a bottle of wine, courtesy of your mom. Your love leaning back as she rises over you, in shadows, the streetlight drifting through the blinds the only illumination, curves and sweet pale skin. The baby throwing the rest of her dinner overboard as the dog rushes into the room. A cool October night in a village in Cork, the smell of peat in the air as you duck into a quiet pub. The light rain falling outside when you awake in the quiet dawn. Another Saturday night on the ice with Capsule. Stumbling out of the Communist Bar after pints with your good friend, lurching down the Danforth as the heavy silent snow falls around you.

So much out there. So much to life.

I love my big moments and I love my small moments and I'll take what I can get. Last week my wife got the horrible news that a girl that she played soccer with this summer had passed away. In her late twenties, diagnosed with cancer in August after going in to see about a sore back. Gone three months later. Awful stuff and a reminder that not everyone can be as lucky as my folks, down for a visit this week, nearing eighty and still full of piss and vinegar. Lucky and they'll be the first to tell you.

Naw life isn't about all of the sound and fury, the white noise, the media telling us for weeks that the end is nigh and then telling us not to panic in the next breath (ever since the fall of the Berlin Wall the msm has cast about for something to keep us on edge, first it was terrorism, now its essentially pandemics and the weather).

Its not about the big roar. Tom Cruise grimacing as he runs from some computer generated threat. Run Tom run. I wonder if that is a Scientologist thing? Isn't Will Smith a Scientologist too? He spends a lot of time in his gigantic movies running. Run run run.

Maybe its in that weirdo Tom Cruise's contract. 'Mr. Cruise must spend ten percent of finished product engaged in running'.

Mr. Cruise leaves me cold. So did Demi Moore when she was big. You know who I like? Colm Meaney. Curly thinning hair, craggy face, heavy set, sneering, smirking Irishman. I could have a beer with Colm Meaney. I'd rather watch Colm Meaney fret and fume about his teenage daughter being pregnant in The Snapper a thousand times before watching Tom Cruise running from another fucking alien spaceship. Just as I'd rather see Julie Delpy, wispy, pale beauty, spend two hours talking to Ethan Hawke, than Demi Moore playing a stripper or a lawyer or an astronaut or whatever the genius producers have figured out for her.

Oh well, to each his own I guess.

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Pat Quinn talked on Friday and damn, I love listening to his pressers. He pulls no punches and he doesn't talk in cliches and he's interesting. He gives us information and you know what pisses me off? If you didn't listen to the shit on the interweb you'd never have an idea. The MSM doesn't give us but a fraction of it. Rotten. Anyways his latest is great stuff as always. What interested me and what I want to talk about, is what he says about Liam Reddox and Ryan Potulny. I especially want to talk about Reddox.

You can't keep track of what is going on without a reference when it comes to the guys coming back from injury or going down with injuries on this club but the fact is that unless a couple guys take a step back or someone else goes down, soon a decision has to be made. Even with MacIntyre gone and Pisani on injured reserve again there is about to be too many forwards on the roster.

Penner, Horcoff, Hemsky, Comrie, Gagner, O'Sullivan, Moreau, Pouliot, Stortini, Jacques, Pouliot, Stone, Nilsson, Reddox, Potulny, Brule

That's two too many.

Comrie and Nilsson are still a ways away I think and Jacques, Pouliot and Stone are all still day to day, I believe. Sounds like Jacques may be ready to go. Pouliot and Stone have just started practicing.

So no decisions need to be made yet but when the time comes what do the Oilers do?

I think Quinn's presser gives us some answers or at least some hints as to what the coach wants. He is happy with Potulny who had a poor camp but who has done well in this callup. What makes the coach happy? The PP goals are nice but what Quinn wants to talk about is Potulny's positioning, his checking, his ability to do the little things correctly.

And Reddox? The fans' whipping boy from last season? The guy whose callup was meant with scorn this season? Well, MacT, who was the ONLY reason Reddox even got a look last year apparently, must be wearing a Pat Quinn suit because Quinn talks about how Reddox was the last cut at this year's camp and how he has done everything they need from him since he came back.

Now Reddox is still a kid and at times his numbers are going to reflect this but the reality is this guy offers a lot that this this team needs. He is aggressive and he goes hard all of the time. He hits and he picks up his man and he wins puck battles. He blocks shots and clears the zone and he gets the puck deep.

Is it sexy? Robert Nilsson sexy? No.

Now he may be Patrick Thoreson redux and if he is, well that's still ok. Thoreson's biggest problem was that he wasn't a guy who would score a lot and when Curtis Glencoss arrived and immediately went on a rampage with Brodziak and Stortini, dining on the opposition's scrubs, well that was it for the Norwegian. So Thoresen went away and then so did Glencross and Brodziak so where did that leave us? With not a damn thing.

If Liam Reddox does what he does, what Patrick Thoreson did, and ends up as a fourth liner who can provide some energy and hold his own and chip in a goal here and there then he's valuable. If he can rise above that and become Pisani II well then all the better. Time will tell.

But think of the last game the Oil played. Reddox forechecked hard and that led to O'Sullivan's game winner. In subsequent shifts, by my memory, an Av was rushing hard and gained the line. Reddox got a piece of him and that resulted in change of possession. He provided an outlet for a defenceman by sagging deep into the zone and then cleared the puck. At the end of a shift he got the puck over centre and then got it deep for the change. Later on he cleared the zone again and also blocked a shot.

Sexy? No.

Doing shit that wins you games? Absolutely.

Reddox has a second coach on his side and its becoming clear that he is going to have an NHL career. MacTavish liked him. Quinn likes him. I'm thinking that if he were playing for Hitchcock or Babcock or Woodcock or Mycock he'd be getting his minutes.

Why? Because he helps the damn team win. And that's the name of the game. Rob Schremp hockey may be sexy but its loser hockey. The Oilers need a little less of that and a little more Colm Meaney. Er, Liam Reddox. I'm thinking when the dust clears he will still be standing.

Piling On

A couple of great contributions to the Sphere from Tyler Dellow and Andy Grabia. The comments thread on Ty's post is pure gold, actually the one on the Penner post is as well. A lot of the old guard, so to speak, chiming in. Great to see.

The Oilers seem to be emerging from the mess that the flu wrought upon them and while they are far from healthy the returns of Souray and Horcoff as well as the imminent return (maybe?) of Stone, Nilsson and Jacques will help as well. Well maybe not.

Its all about moral victories these days with the Oilers, same as its been since about December of 2006 when Tjarnqvist and Staios went down, revealing that Lowe's plan to go with a top six that included Matt Greene, Ladislav Smid and Marc Andre Bergeron, as well as shedding a whack of veteran forwards that past summer, may not have been all that great of an idea.

Actually with Lowe, and apparently with his successor as well, its not so much the guys that he dumps really. I mean you have guys who you have to move or cannot sign regardless (Pronger, Peca, Spacek, Samsonov) and you have guys who you can always make an argument against keeping, either because of their salaries or their flaws or they are done or what they bring in return or because they are replaceable. Hell put any of the following in any category that you like there: Dvorak, Laraque, Harvey, Tarnstrom (twice), Garon, Smyth, Sykora, Smith, Pitkanen, Cole, Kotalik, Greene, Stoll, Glencross, Reasoner, Throesen, Brodziak, Winchester, Torres.

Have I forgotten anyone? Probably.

In any case that's a lot of guys who had some use sent out the door these past few years and, as I said, you can argue that Glencross was a gamble or that Torres was overpaid or that Harvey was just a plug or that Thoresen is in Europe now anyways so he's no good. And so on.

But see the problem is and always has not been who got sent out but who has come back. And the answer is precious little but more kids to go into the meat grinder of the NHL. More kids who don't know the first thing about playing in the NHL. And still you get the yokels calling for Tambo to trade Hemsky and Horcoff and Gilbert - bring in Eberle, Petry and bring Schremp back while you're at it. Then they'll win it all. Guaranteed.

And with Fernando Pisani probably on his last legs and Ethan Moreau definitely done, the fact remains that this team is woefully short of players who can do those things that help win games. Again.

So when management ignores, again, the holes in the lineup, whilst they chase the latest video game hero (I wonder what Tambo was offering for Jokinen? probably Smid and Cogliano one would think) one wonders what is a fan to do?

Four years out of the playoffs coming, four years. You can talk about flu and injuries but the St. Louis Blues were ravaged by injuries last year and made the playoffs. It happens. But for some reason fans are happy to make excuses for the club.

Being fan is an odd deal. You are asked to cheer for this club, spend your money (there's the rub), trust in your heroes, trust in management.

But when management fails again and again then what do you do? Watch games in the hope of getting one like the Columbus game a few weeks ago? Wade through the dreck in hope of the one gem? The team has been more entertaining under Quinn but they are still losing and really the whole point of the exercise is to win, right?

I opined during camp that Quinn, already muttering about the roster, an astute politician, might angle for the GM's job if this season is a failure. I still believe that this may happen come the spring when Daryl Katz looks at tens more millions spent, another failure and when he asks his famous coach what went wrong and the big Irishman (and he does have huge hands Vic, btw, saw him on the subway once, the old grump) tells him that his roster is a piece of shit and I told you so back in September, then who lives and who dies? The guy with decades of experience and success or the rookie GM who can't even find a goddamned player to win a puck battle.

What do you think?

Hell this club is already the Florida Panthers. May as well have chaos in management like them too.

P.S. And Hejda!

Can You Hear The Drums Fernando?

Some frightening news today. Fernando Pisani has been sent home halfway through the roadtrip as his colitis has flared up again.

Now I'm no doctor, although I play one on TV, but I would presume that if its serious enough to send him home then its pretty serious. And what this means is that the end is probably in sight for Fernando Pisani. Even if its just a minor flareup the red flag has been raised and in a bottom line business its unlikely to me that he will be able to get another contract next season. Its difficult to see any club signing an aging winger with health issues that can knock him out of the lineup at any time.

Fernando seems to have been around forever but as Scott Reynolds has pointed out he actually has not yet qualified for his NHL pension yet, just over thirty games short of the four hundred needed. Its a little sad to see this as until his first major bout with the disease two seasons ago Fernando was the poster boy for reliability. From 2001/02 in the AHL to 2006/07 he played 76 games or more every season, providing around 15 goals a year - 26 in the AHL, 17 in the AHL and 8 in 35 games in Edmonton, then seasons of 16, 18 and 14 with the Oilers. Even in 2008 when he came back from colitis he scored 13 in 56 games and then last season he scored 7 in 38 games, limited by a broken ankle.

Consistent.

Reliable.

Underrated.

It may be early to eulogize his career (I certainly hope so) but Fernando will be remembered for two things, maybe three. The last remains to be seen.

First of all there is the type of player that he was. He was a guy who would chip in those fifteen goals but his role for this franchise was one that they sorely need today. He was a guy who could check and outscore the best players on the other team, a guy who could win puck battles and forecheck very well, a guy who could separate his man from the puck, an outstanding penalty killer and a guy who was extremely low maintenance. He was the ultimate 'bottom six' guy, as conventional wisdom calls the guys who don't score a lot of goals, but on every Oiler team he played on he was a top six guy in terms of helping the club win, which is the point after all.

And of course there was the wonderful run in 2006. The two goals to even up game six against the Wings. The shortie to win game five gainst the Canes. The goal and then the near miss in the third period of game seven. For two months Pisani scored and then he scored again. BIG goals. CLUTCH goals. ;) If he had stuffed that shot past Ward late in game seven and the Oilers had gone on to win he likely would have won the Conn Smythe. There have always been 'regular' guys who have gotten hot for a series or two, guys like John Druce or Chris Kontos, but nobody from this family of players ever went on a run like Fernando Pisani. And all of this while doing the heavy sledding.

What a player.

And if this is it for our man from Edmonton he will be the first player of any note (and Reynolds and I have this argument all of the time but I stand by my case - a guy who has played his entire career with the organization, seven seasons (or parts thereof) with the big club, a playoff hero is a player of note) to have played all of his career with the Oilers. Randy Gregg almost did before he came out of retirement for a short twirl with the Canucks but Fernando would be the first.

An eighth round pick, a local boy, a guy who showed great dedication coming back from his original bout with this awful disease.

Here's hoping that it is just a minor flareup and that he will be back next week. I hate writing about a guy using the past tense.

But if not and this is the beginning of the end then its right to recognize an underrated guy who has never sold the fans or his teammates short in any way. Here's hoping for good health for Fernando Pisani.

To Add - word from the Oilers' site as Steve Tambellini says that it looks like Fernando will be out indefinitely. If its longterm I would guess that he will hang them up sooner rather than later. Once again, best wishes to Fernando for a speedy recovery.

Will Bird

When Will Bird was twenty three years old, in 1914, war broke out in Europe. His youngest brother, Stephen, enlisted immediately and shipped off to France. A year later he was dead. Will enlisted and took his brother's place in the front lines in Flanders, serving in one of the most famous Canadian units, the Black Watch.

Will Bird survived the war but most of his comrades did not. When he returned to Nova Scotia after the war young Will Bird became a writer and drew upon his experiences a number of times, his most famous work being “Ghosts Have Warm Hands”.

Bird’s recollections of his time in the trenches should be must reading for all students in this country.

His war was not one of heroism or glory, although there is plenty of the former present in his story. It is one of fear and sorrow and anger; despite the triumphs that Will Bird participates in at Vimy, Passchedaele and in the final hundred days of the war when the Canadian Corps spearheaded the Aliied victory he does not take any satisfaction from these triumphs, other than the fact that he has survived.

Poor Will Bird saw far more sadness than any man should ever see. And his burden would become far greater when his only son, also named Stephen, was killed in the next war, leading a company of North Nova Scotia Highlanders against the sons of the men whom his father had fought twenty five years before.

On Remembrance Day what should we think of Will Bird and what he and his family sacrificed?

We should remember that they did what they thought was right and that they fought and died for the freedom of others.

We should be aware that we are amongst the luckiest people to ever walk the earth, we Canadians. We have great wealth and freedom, unmatched by most people who have ever lived on this planet. We should be grateful for this. Some of this is luck and some of this is hardearned by the people who settled this land and by the people who protected and protect it. It’s a hard cruel world and the idea that we can stand idly by while others do the heavy lifting for democracy and security isn’t right, in my opinion.

We should be aware that we are more fortunate than most people and that does mean that we have responsibilities to make other people’s lives better.

And having read Will Bird, I can tell you that he would say that we must remember to question those in charge, that we must ask why we go to war, that we must always always question, because that is a freedom that we have and a freedom that he fought for and a freedom that his brother and his son died for. He himself used that freedom many times in his writing as he questioned and criticized what happened to he and his comrades in Flanders.

You may support the war or you may oppose it or you, like me, may be somewhere in between, supporting the troops and believing that their work is right, while also realizing that they participate in what is probably an unwinnable conflict, uneasily thinking that if my own boy were asked to go, I would beg of him not to. And if I am not willing to ask my own son to go then how can I ask others to go?

But wherever you sit you must, I think, respect those who are over there, just as we do those who went before. You must remember that our freedoms are many and earned and that they should never be taken for granted.

That is Remembrance Day for me.

The Mustache Rides, Again. Also Pat Quinn, Fernando Pisani And Other Anachronisms

I work from home a couple of days a week. When my wife is working I need to ferry the kids about from school and daycare and all of that good stuff. Luckily I have a job where I can work from home and do this.

When my wife's maternity leave ended and school started I began this new routine. I don't mind it. I prefer the office but overall its not bad. The one thing that I can do while working at home is listen to music.

I've talked about music a few times here. With the exception of a few Hip CDs I haven't bought a CD in over fifteen years. I'm hopelessly stuck in the eighties and early nineties. My Youtube account, concerts I (rarely) attend, everything about me musically died when grunge did. Or went into a holding pattern anyways.

So right now I am listening to some Midnight Oil. This is the last of about a hundred CDs I own. I have listened to every single one since Labour Day, one by one, and this is the last of the bunch.

I saw Midnight Oil once. Your man is one big scary bald fucker. Intense.

Pretty good shit.

This morning I listened to some G&R. Metal has been dead for a while now. In Sudbury, like mostly everywhere in Canada, there was a time when it was the music of choice. Hell even the preppy guys in high school listened to Guns and Roses. Terrific stuff, even if Axl was a total douchebag.

This morning I listened to Lies, haven't listened to that in a million years. One of the songs - I Used To Love Her But I Had To Kill Her.

When this came out I remember a mild outcry but nothing compared to what you would get today I suspect. I would guess that sucker might not see the light of day now. I could be wrong, of course. For all I know there's worse stuff out there.

Its funny how social mores change and how your persepctive changes as you get older. I'm sure everyone read these gems, you did if you dropped by Lowetide's yesterday.

A couple of things. As you get older you truly give less and less of a shit what other people think. Take the big fellow as an example. When he was young he'd piss on the floor and get up on the furniture and get into the garbage and hump peoples' legs. Then we cut off his balls and he mellowed out. We had a decade where he was a good dog. No trouble at all. Now, as the end of his days near, its as if someone has turned back the clock. As soon as the front door closes he clambers up on the couch. He'll saunter into the dining room as we eat and sit beside the baby waiting for the inevitable men overboard. If the cupboards are open he'll proceed to the buffet and eat his fill out of the compost.

My wife shouts and swats and stomps and he looks at her like a bored teenager just in from a bender, rolls his eyes and drifts off.

Doesn't give a damn.

And I'm cut from the same cloth. Now I'm not that old, really. Forty one isn't old. But I'm getting there. I've gotten far enough that I don't care about what other people think about my clothes, my haircut or what I say or do. I really was never into that deal, to be honest, but as far as I ever was is now long gone. Don't get me wrong. I'm polite. I'm not a dick. But if I'm at a party and I think of a funny joke that involves assfucking then you had better believe I'm telling the assfucking joke.

Part of it too is that there is already a disconnect between me and what passes as the normal in society these days.

I don't have a cell phone. I refuse. I don't like most of the movies or the music or the television. I think that the salaries that athletes and actors and brokers on Bay Street are ridiculous. My generation, while softer than Joffrey Lupul in high traffic areas, still had to earn our dues. We didn't grow up in a depression or fight the Germans or Japanese. We can't build a house with our bare hands, wire it, plumb it, shoot a gun, dress a deer, rebuild an engine, play guitar, skate like the wind, hit a baseball, throw a fine right jab, drink a case of whiskey at a sitting or any of the other hundred things our fathers could but nobody I knew had their shit handed to them. When we got out of school we struggled like bastards, most of us. Tweren't easy.

Nowadays I look at my kids' generation and I struggle, oh my God. There is a boy in my son's class. The kid is hopped up on sugar and dim from all of the TV he watches, I am sure, although its likely just hereditary because his mother is about as smart as that coffee cup you threw into recycling earlier today. Dense.

So dumb she spells dumb without the b. Dum.

So this kid ran into some problems last year because he used to chase other kids with a stick in the schoolyard. The schoolyard is small and yet his mother was oblivious to it all. Just didn't see it when the other parents told her to get her head out of her ass.

So this year the boy has to deal with him. So far no problems but there was a hint of it the other day. He'd been hassling the boy and so we asked him what he did about it and he said that he had told the teacher. Fine and dandy.

And my wife says 'if he bothers you again, you make sure to tell us'.

And I look at him and I say 'listen, if he gives you a hard time, starts pushing you, I'll tell you what to do'

And my wife gives me the 'you shut up now' look about I keep going.

What I want you to do, see, is tell him to stop. And if he keeps at you then you tell him one last time. And if he keeps at it then ...

OK who wants ice cream?!

As if that's going to stop me.

The problem is that this kid is stupid and he's a bully and his mother lets him do as he pleases. The first time I see one of my kids pick on a smaller kid will be the last time I see it, let me tell you. My folks think we're easy on our kids but we're amongst the strictest parents we know.

And that says a lot about how times have changed.

My best friend in grade school was a big kid but just a real gentle guy, always smiling, not a mean bone in him. And some other kid, one of these big mouthed kids, was at him all of the time, just all of a sudden, picking at him, teasing him, threatening him. And one day this kid says to my buddy that he is going to get it after school. And my buddy says alright.

So its after school and we all march over the the pathway that runs from the school to one of the streets and there's probably about fifty kids and your man who called out my buddy is all talking talking and he has a rep of being a tough kid and then they say lets go (we were eleven at the time) and my buddy grabs him and he punches him once, hard, right in the face, and the kid just collapses onto the ground and there's another three or four shots and that's it. He's up and running for home all blood and snot and tears.

Problem solved.

No guns or knives or lawyers or cops or zero tolerance this or any other shit. The bully met his match and he kept his distance after that and that was that.

That long witless ramble brought to you by Pat Quinn.

-------------------------------

A win, a win, oh finally a win.

I only caught the last half of the victory over the Avs but it was pretty clear to me that the flu bug certainly had an impact over the past few weeks. The club had some jump, finally, and while they did get outshot, again, they took the game by the scruff in the third and took it home pretty nicely. Haven't seen that in a while.

Other than the ridiculous display by the power play another very interesting thing I found about last night was what Pat Quinn said in his post game presser.

Quinn, if anything, has outshone the erudite and hirsute MacT in terms of providing us with entertaining and enlightening commentary on the games.

What he spoke about last night was the type of game that Liam Reddox and Ryan Potulny played and how it helped the Oilers win.

He got open, he won faceoffs, he didn't get into trouble with the puck. Guys like Ryan, guys like Reddox, they're not going to turn it over. They put the pucks by people and they go to work

Now its fashionable to slam Liam Reddox and Fernando Pisani, amongst others, as guys who do nothing. They don't score a lot and they don't hit a lot and in this video game age, well, for many that is all that counts.

These are the fans who called for Rob Schremp to be installed as the first line centre when he was eighteen years old because Schremp, wait for it, scored a lot of points in junior. You know who else scored a ton of points in junior? Here's a few names: Jamie Matthews. Todd Simon. Max Middendorf.

These guys were all stars in junior. Big stars.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

This isn't meant as a shot at Schremp who is healthy scratched for one of the worst teams in the NHL right now. Schremp is Schremp. He had a nice junior career and that is probably what he will be remembered for. He will probably carve out a nice living in Switzerland or something. Good for him. Far better than 99.99 percent of the population.

But trick moves and sick hands don't get you an NHL job. I played hockey with a guy who had a cup of coffee in the AHL. He could hit the crossbar from centre ice nine times out of ten during warmup, no word of a lie and here he was playing in a summer beer league.

I have a buddy who was a scrub for one of the worst OUAA hockey clubs back in our day. This guy is the best player I have ever seen. If he played in my league he'd score five or six goals a game. And he could barely crack a shitty OUAA lineup.

Crazy.

Very few guys can score, I mean really score, at the NHL level. If you cannot then you had better be able to do other things and do them well. Things like killing penalties and checking your man and winning faceoffs and coming out of the corner with the puck. Liam Reddox does these things. Does he do them well enough to have an NHL career? We're not sure yet but if he can then he will stick with this club. It was only one game but he and Pisani flanked Cogliano and were a bright spot on a club which very often sees the ice tilted the wrong way.

And that counts for something. Actually it counts for a lot, especially on this club.

Hey Oldtimer, Shut Up With Your Mustache Stories!

Today's thread at LT's features comments from RiversQ, Vic Ferrari and Andy Grabia. It was like old home week almost. All we needed were appearances from Loxy, Alana, the Prez and the Covered in Oil gang and sacamano and Colby Cosh and ... okay, well maybe it wasn't exactly like old times. Still for a second there it was like when the Oilers were good. Yeah I am that old.

Plus Tyler Dellow is on the lam apparently. The last we heard he had been deported to Croatia but apparently he hijacked a catamaran. Last he was seen he was sailing for the Isle of Lesbos. Because he's a dirty pervert. Not as big a pervert as Mike Winters.

But close.

Speaking of dirty perverts I'm taking the plunge for a second Movember. I've been ill all week so last night I hit the shower pretty scruffy and sour, essentially with five days of flu sweat, bed stink and dried couch jack to scrub off, plus that many days of facial hair to remove.

I grow it thick. When the beard comes in, once it gets past the awful black itchy stage, it comes in full, red and curly, like Kate Winslet's bush, only not as pretty. So I had a starting point already.

I already did regular stash two years back. Its time to crank it up a notch.

So we're going Fu Manchu.

And as you can see it is truly awesome in its awfulness. Absolutely hideous. The wife absolutely hates it. The boy loves it, probably because he thinks his Daddy looks like a cowboy or a relief pitcher or a porn star. Or maybe he thinks its ironic that his old man is totally gay looking.

Because at the end of this, in twenty four days, I am going to look exactly like a very ugly gay man. I'll be able to walk into The Toolbox, whip off my shirt and I will fit right in.

(I have been so I know of what I speak, btw. It was in the name of research, I kid you not. A story for another day.)

Other than Taylor Chorney I see no real challenge from the Oilers who are attempting this little challenge. Chorney looks entirely and totally awesome. The rest of the guys, meh. Maybe O'Sullivan, who looks like a creepy hobo, especially with the missing teeth, might pose a challenge.

And Patrick, what's with the smile? How about scoring once in a while? Then you can smile.

Surprisingly Stortini is not all that impressive. Very strange as when I see him the first thing that pops into my mind is back hair.

In a big way.

Its time for a diversion. It was last night that RiversQ said, quite simply:

This is awful.

And the Oilers have been just that. Now we know they aren't as good as their start but they're not this bad either. Injuries have hurt. Pretty well every guy with any size and sandpaper was out of the lineup last night, exceptions being Stortini and Moreau, who is just a shadow of his former self. Souray. Smid. Stone. Jacques. All out. And of course the only veteran centre on the roster is out as well. And Hemsky is hurt. And the flu has not run its course.

Who knew you might need a guy who could provide two way play, win draws, get the puck moving the right way etc etc.? Even Horcoff struggling is twice the player of nearly every other Oiler forward.

Tsk.

So what do the Oilers have in a week or so once they have everyone back, we hope, except for Souray.

The goaltending has been decent.

The blue is nice and deep. Chorney has shown some good things and Peckham will be fine once he is fully healthy and Smid is getting the Lubo push. So there's actually some depth there and a bit of a nice mix of players.

Up front they have one terrific line and they can cobble together a good fourth line (pick your players) and I think they can find a decent group to take on the softs.

The problem, again, is the lack of NHL players, especially on the left wing and in the middle.

Its especially galling when you look at LW and see the starts that Smyth, Torres and Glencross have had and then look at the Oilers and realize that number two on their depth chart is, um, Comrie? Jacques?

Je Sus.

And once again the complaint is not so much these moves as individual moves, though you can have at it, I certainly have, or in jettisoning Pronger, Spacek, Tarnstrom (twice), Hejda, Sykora, Winchester, Samsonov, Dvorak, Stoll, Reasoner, Peca, Cole, Kotalik, Thoresen and Brodziak.

Some of these guys were leaving regardless. For some the return was very good. And yes, some of these guys were definitely bit players and easily replaced.

Except they were not replaced.

And so the team lacks veterans and has lacked veterans for four seasons now. Pat Quinn remarked the other day on how this club is lacking players who can win puck battles and get the puck moving the right way and play their positions and who have experience and you look at that list and you know what?

A few guys on that list or their equivalents would certainly help.

A guy like Brodziak who scores a little and can PK and win some draws would help now that Horcoff has gone down.

Hell a guy like Patrick Thoresen would help now. The guy could play hockey. He wasn't going to score a lot but he's a lot better player than a few guys on the Oilers' roster right now.

Was a guy like Thoresen replaceable? Sure. But if you don't replace him then where are you?

You are where the Oilers are now. Hoping that Pisani is not done. (Sadly, he may be.) Hoping that Moreau is not done. (He is.) Waiting for Ryan Stone to come back because he is one guy who can be relied upon to get the puck out when it comes up his wing and he gets himself into the passing lanes and he can work the cycle.

Ryan Stone.

Yikes! God help us. This is what Tambellini and Lowe have wrought.

The stupid fuckers.

Ennui and Malaise Are Not Towns In The South of France

November is one of those forgettable months. Along with February I think we could do without it although I hate March most of all because its such a goddamned tease. Then again, at least March has its pleasant moments and warm weather is right around the corner. November is grey and dreary and the excitement for Christmas has not yet ramped up. Cold frozen grass and mud, snowfalls that melt almost immediately, howling winds and people scowling as they rush by bundled up. And its dark by supper time.

Blah.

On top of everything I have the mother of all head colds. We’re talking full up to the top, if I move in the night I start leaking everywhere.

So I’m a little snarly. Maybe I’m overdosing on candy and its throwing my body off (after all it is a finely tuned machine) but I’m not my usual cheery happy go lucky self.

Case in point. We played Saturday night, riding a five game winning streak. Well we came out flat and got outworked and outhustled badly. This was one of those weird games where we seriously outchanced our opponents but they cashed the few chances that they had, all five bell buddy standing alone in front of the net types, and came away with the two points. Fact is though they deserved it, we played like we didn't give a damn. They came at us hard and for some reason that always eludes me, the refs decided to put their whistles away. It’s a non contact league and bodies are flying everywhere and tempers are fraying and the refs are telling us to get up and get back into the play.

So there’s a few minutes left and the puck skips past one of our guys and their winger barrels after it and he’s got ten feet on me but I have the angle and just as he figures he’s going to shoot I lay a crosscheck on him that sends him sprawling. The whistle blows and the crowd gathers and buddy says that I am shit (but I caught him didn’t I?) and that he is going to kill me and I look at him and I smirk and I say:

You’re fat.

He sputters and I repeat myself and then I skate over to the box where the ref explains to me that had I hit his legs he would not have penalized me.

So if I had taken his legs out and sent him headfirst into the boards, all the better?

I just don’t get it.

Anyhows I’m surly. And yes I’m a dirty prick but the fuckers had been getting away with shit all fucking game so fuck them.

And last night I take the big guy out for his bedtime constitutional and the wife works today 7 to 7 so I figure I had better get a headstart on getting the garbage out. We have these new (ish) bins for garbage and recycling, they’re huge, ours is the extralarge, I think, it’s a little smaller than a Chevette. We live twelve steps or so up from the street but at least these things have wheels so its not all that bad. So I grab it from beside the house and I’m wheeling it out and I’m at the top of the stairs almost and suddenly the fucking lid cracks open and there’s a motherfucking raccoon right in front of me, trying to get out. I stagger back clutching my heart, screaming like a little girl, fucker scared the shit out of me, and he nonchalantly slides down to the ground.

Right in front of the big fellow.

Oh sweet revenge.

The first time he really got a hold of a raccoon I was worried but since then he has had multiple encounters, the raccoon winning would be like Andrew Cogliano taking the puck off of Zdeno Chara.

It ain’t fucking happening.

So my knight in shining armour tore a strip off of the fat bastard while I cheered him on adoringly. The neighbours peered disapprovingly from behind their curtains and wondered once again about how the neighbourhood had gone to pot ever since the hillbillies moved in across the street.

----------------------

The above picture is just about two years old. I don’t fuck around when it comes to the facial hair and that was my contribution to Movember, I raised a few hundred bucks with that sucker.

My wife runs half marathons to raise money. I grow facial hair.

Colby Cosh, who took the pic, thought I looked very Rockford Files while Dennis King figured I looked like I had just gotten out of a Newfoundland prison.

I was in Edmonton celebrating my 40th. Horcoff scored in the shootout as the Oilers beat an equally weak Chicago club. Dick Tarnstrom, soon to be traded, got hurt. Pitkanen was awesome. Geoff Sanderson not so much. Did I mention that Chicago wasn't much of a club?

The Oilers, after the collapse of the previous season, were dreadful. Pitkanen and Gilbert were splendid on the backend and whenever Horcoff, Hemsky and Penner took the ice the Hawks were hemmed in their own end. On the other hand the Oiler kids spent most of the time running around their own zone and the rest of the team, led by veterans in Stoll, Torres and Reasoner, were reasonably competent, if nothing too special. At least they could get the puck moving the right way.

I should have kept the fucking mustache, I’d be tripping over it by now.

Hell we all know that the truth about this club is somewhere between the hot start and this stretch, which is rivaling the post Smyth trade disaster in terms of brutal ineffectiveness. In four of the past five games the club has a total of one goal.

That is truly shit.

Having to play Chorney and Strudwick and Peckham has hurt badly and there is no doubt that the flu has absolutely ravaged this club. That said there is a disturbing lack of confidence and enthusiasm in this club right now, especially frustrating after their surge out of the gate.

Is Ryan Stone that important?

One thing about Stone is that he knows how to separate a guy from the puck and how to play his position and how to get the puck to the net and one hopes that once Pisani gets fit and Stone returns and Comrie gets healthy (will he ever? Little dude has only been out, what, three weeks? Does he have the plague?) that things will get better but the problem is the same as its been for years now. Not enough fucking NHL players.

They have one line that can go toe to toe with the Wings or anyone and get that puck the length of the ice and produce offence and after that it’s a gong show. You could take your pick of players and create a perfectly effective fourth line to chip in but after that, at this time, you have a bunch of guys who are too young or too old or too dumb to play good basic fundamental hockey.

After Penner who would you send out on the LW to protect a lead? Or to break a tie? Or to do anything but bang a few bodies?

The kid line, those great hopes of two seasons ago, are bleeding goals against and doing nothing offensively.

O’Sullivan looks lost. There is no more talk of Brule replacing Gagner or Cogliano, not that this would be that difficult at this point.

What the hell is going on?

The work of management over the past four seasons has been beaten to death here and elsewhere. Veterans and quality players who wore Oiler colours are scattered about the league; the biggest issue, as always, remains the fact that few, if any, were replaced by any quality at all.

Remember, another missed playoff season (with a cap team, again) and this club equals the disaster that followed the breakup of the dynasty clubs. Drive for five anyone?

Oh well, the Olympics are coming up, very exciting. There's no way we can lose at hockey, right? Right?!

Here is hoping that Canada wins the gold and that Ryan Smyth is there. That would make me laugh (or cry?) all the harder.

If you get geeked out about the Olympics like I do, check out the link at right, in the bottom section of links. A good friend of mine will be carrying the torch somewhere up along the beautiful Lake Superior. He's been involved in the Olympics (he worked at the Sydney Games) and he is pretty excited about the opportunity. Like all bloggers he is both a pervert and a misanthrope. ;)

He's also a hell of a hockey player. He would have taken that fucker out at the knees and then piled him into the boards for good measure.

Crazy Sudbury folk.

Its Scary Out There

Work this past week was brutal and vicious and I’d stagger in the door exhausted and worn down to a useless nub. I’m pretty good at leaving the work at work but this week was tougher than most when it came to that. It was Wednesday night though that it all turned for the better as the boy dragged me downstairs to play some hockey. I cracked open a Guinness (and let me just express my delight at the Guinness ads now on the site) and he took some shots on me and I took some shots on him and then he exclaimed that it was time for a game.

And I’ll be the Oilers and you’ll be the Oilers. We’ll be the Oilers and you will pass it to me and I will shoot.

He already wants the damn puck.

So we did a little bit of this and then I told him to try and put one top corner and he had no idea what I was talking about so I grabbed the ball and began to fire it at the net.

A couple of weeks ago I scored the prettiest goal of my life but last week was more the McLean signature game. I’ve always been more of a playmaker. I was covering for our Dman and the puck got chipped into our zone and I skated back, gathered it up and then hit the same Dman I was covering for, in full stride, at the opposing blueline from our slot. He skated in and scored and we were on our way. A while later we were scrambling around their net and the puck squirted behind the icing line. I gathered it and backhanded it into the mess in front and it bounced off of their goalie’s skate and in. As a guy who once scored in two consecutive games from behind the net it was same old same old.

Just don’t ask me to raise the puck.

So here we go, top corner, and I miss the net, bottom corner, hit the post, middle of the net, bottom corner, opposite bottom corner. Finally I figure I’m holding back and so I fire one and the ball whistles across the room, hitting my liquor cabinet, missing shattering all of my pint glasses by six inches.

Whereupon the boy retrieves the ball, steps back about ten feet from the net and rifles it under the crossbar, right at the right post.

Some have it. Some don’t.

------------------------------------

Dustin Penner has it and he has it good right now. Derek Zona was the guy last year who would post Penner’s underlying numbers constantly, showing that wherever he was in the lineup became an immediately stronger place. I understood what Derek was saying but I looked at the big man and, like everyone, saw a guy who was only scratching the surface. He might have nice underlying numbers but to me it was an anomoly.

I’m not a full out numbers guy. I look at them to help me gain a better understanding of the game but I don’t swear by them. Of course even the guys who the ‘watch the game’ crowd sneer at, the real math guys, generally see a lot more when they watch the game than your man who calls for Tom Gilbert or Shawn Horcoff to be traded after every shift. I've watched games with Tyler Dellow and have conversed enough with guys like Vic and RiversQ and Derek and Bruce McCurdy to recognize that they know a hell of a lot about hockey. They pick up on a lot more shit than all of your guys who figure Dion Phaneuf for a Norris trophy candidate or Rob Schremp for a fifty goal man in waiting.

Penner is an interesting case though. When he was hired by the Oilers there were a lot who thought it was a poor move, given the cost. What I found interesting and always find difficult are the observers who do not believe that a player can get better. They look at the past and ignore the fact that in some cases the indicators are not always right. In Penner's case the past numbers were not really promising.

Now I did not like the Penner move. I liked the Vanek attempt but I did not think much of the Penner sheet. In my first view of Penner in the 2006 playoffs he awed and terrified me, a huge man with great hands who gave the Oilers fits whenever he was cycling deep in their zone. His following season though he left me indifferent, despite his twenty nine goals.

A lot of folks point to the coaching change and of course it didn’t hurt, I guess, but its not like Penner walked into camp, Quinn told him a story about going over the top at Vimy and the light suddenly went on. Quinn had an open mind, for sure, but Penner’s improvement is almost all Penner, one hundred percent. He came into camp in excellent shape and he got off to a good start and he is playing with confidence and enthusiasm. I’d like to say that I am still not convinced and that we’ll look again at Christmas and talk then before we pronounce that he has arrived but the fact is that he is dominating games. He is charging the net and defencemen are bouncing off of him and he is dunking in those three footers. Whichever line he plays with suddenly takes off. He was the cure for Hemsky and now it looks like he may be jump starting Horcoff.

Of course the Oilers’ problem is one we figured all along. The wave of injuries and illness on the blue has hurt badly of course but in the end the lack of depth up front is killing them. If Pisani is Pisani then things will get better but it’s a tell that we need Ryan Stone back to add a guy who knows where to go when the good guys don’t have the puck. The kids got filled against the Wings, hell it was a gong show whenever the big line wasn’t out there.

They might get by if Pisani is OK and if Stone is OK and when the D get back. They’ll probably win a few more than they lose, I think. There’s some quality on this club. But the Detroits and Chicagos expose them badly.

They don't have enough guys who have it, at least not yet. Guys like Gagner and Cogliano and maybe even Jacques will someday be able to do the job at this level but they're not ready yet.

They still need help up front. In a big way.

Jesus Murphy

So much for skyrockets in flight and afternoon delights, huh?

Back in a far happier time, that is, Saturday afternoon, we were hanging about the house, the junior clansmen and I, the wife being at work for the weekend (two twelve hour shifts - she doesn't even see the kids).

I was prepping for my one connection to sanity, the weekly Capsule game.

(As an aside after this summer's debacle its been a fine start to the season for old Capsule, emphasis on old, after an opening loss there have been five straight wins between the two leagues. I've played four games, have two goals, three assists and have not been on the ice for a single goal against. Put me in coach, I'm ready to play. Add a little veteran crust to that fourth line. Hell I'll sit on the bench, get beat up by McGrattan and spend my three or four minutes of icetime scrambling around. You bet. And I'll do it for half of what MacIntyre gets paid too.)

Anyhow, I was a couple of hours away from gametime and I was doing my usual pregame routine, visualizing not pulling anything, doing some lunges in the kitchen, when the baby wandered by.

Now I rarely talk about our youngest because frankly babies are boring. I enjoy them but until they start to motor around they don't have a lot of cachet with me. My wife is the opposite, she LOVES babies. I love making them. Then I can do without until they are ten months old or so.

So the baby is no longer a baby. Fifteen months old and she is the most mental of the three (mentallest???) and that is saying a lot. Follow her around and we're talking climbing on the furniture, including the dining room table, emptying the TV cabinet of DVDs, dismantling the shoe rack, dumping the dog's water dish, exploring the garbage, abusing her older siblings, demanding (and I do mean demanding) food and drink ... you get the picture.

So she saunters by with a smirk and I pause and then keep on with my pregame workout and about a half minute later I hear a roar.

JESUS MURPHY!

Its the boy. He's picked up some language from his old man. That's my phrase of choice when I'm frustrated with my loyal subjects, its not that bad, right? Not as bad as a few weeks ago when some fucker on a bike ran a red light and almost mowed us down as we crossed the Danforth. I'm a paranoid when it comes to red lights so when it goes red I always wait until everyone stops before I step out or pull out into the intersection. So here I am with my three kids and I look and I look and I step out and then buddy rips through, right in front of us.

I stop, count the kids and say, quite clearly, dazed by your man's complete and utter stupidity.

Fucking cocksucker.

So we'll know where they picked that up from the first time they say it.

So I walk into the living room and my oldest is laughing her head off (she is trouble, big trouble that one), the baby is cackling and the boy is staring in horror at the diaper, completely full of stinky yellow shit, that has been deposited in his lap.

Good times.

-------------------

Oh what a difference four days makes, Saturday evening the Oilers were on top of the world, having dispatched the BJS on Thursday with such elan that we were breaking out the Bananarama and Dexy's Midnight Runners, oh baby the 80s are back! And the flu ridden lot of them came back from their little trip oh and two and then last night they stumbled and now Detroit and Boston are on the horizon and folks are talking about trading the whole lot of the sorry bums, again.

Brownlee was right.

Lets put it this way - this club, we will all agree, has holes in it. Now it had a good start to the season, some folks pointed at some luck to it but the fact is that they played nine games where the results were good and the team basically played well. Now as those nine games wore on the injury list grew from Pisani and Pouliot to include Souray and Staios and then Stone.

So you have Strudwick and Chorney playing. A lot. Anyone think this is good? And your depth chart at LW is Penner and then a bunch of schmucks. Of course some might say that's the case even if they are healthy.

And then Hemsky, Brule, Comrie, Gilbert, Lubo, Smid, Jacques and Penner, that we know of, contracted the flu.

And apparently there are at least four other players with it (source TSN).

Ever have the flu? Even a twenty four hour variety? How about one that laid you up for days? How well do you think you would be able to play sports while suffering from it?

I'm not worried yet. The players dropped a big stinky one in our lap these last few days and part of me thinks management did the same to us this summer but I won't worry about this club until everyone is up and at them.

When they are if the mess remains then I might want to drop a stinky turd somewhere but until then me no worry!

Skyrockets In Flight

NHL network is having a free preview this month and so I've gotten the opportunity to watch a lot of Oilers' hockey. Its been a lot of fun and its also become quite clear that its a good thing that I'm not subscribing to CI. Oilers' hockey at my fingertips every night would be a hard pill for the wife to swallow and likely it would be a gateway drug; soon I'd be checking out the rest of the NW, the Pens, the Wings, the Hawks, the Caps ... I'd end up watching TV in a ravine somewhere inside my very large cardboard box. Me and Winters. In the winter.

I have to say that I haven't enjoyed an Oilers' game as much as Thursday's night game since June 17th 2006. What a terrific show they put on, rallying from three goals down against a seriously quality club in the BJs. Just fantastic stuff. After that game they were tied for first in goals per game in the league. Hard to believe.

Easier to believe that they give up goals pretty easily too.

Now I am generally a glass half full and then fill it up again please type guy but three years of losing and management follies had left me pretty sour come this season. I've said all along that I'll be happy to eat crow if I am wrong and while it is early and there are some underlying trends that are a little worrisome at the same time I think I'm probably a little more positive about the Oilers than a lot in the Sphere.

The two points that many are bringing up about the Oilers' start are that they are being outshot (outcorsi'd as it were) and that their shooting percentage is not going to hold up.

Now the latter point is correct of course but I think it is important to note that the Oilers are getting into the places where it is a lot easier to score. You can have your Jason Blakes of the world lofting thirty five foot wrist shots and then your percentage will drop as your shot totals rise but the Oilers for the most part are scoring their goals from right on the doorstep.

What am I arguing? Well, this % will likely drop but the way the Oilers go to the net I'm thinking that they are going to continue to score a lot of goals. Its not like Penner has been scoring Moreaus, caroming pucks in from sixty feet out. He's slamming them in from a few feet out.

As for the whole outshooting issue, well yes its been happening but by my eye only the Chicago game was one that the Oilers truly deserved to lose. More importantly they have been getting outchanced but for the most part the discrepancy has been pretty reasonable. Using Dennis' work we can see that in nine games so far the Oilers have outchanced the opposition at EVs three times, been outchanced five times and have been even once. And one of the games they were outchanced by one. Getting outchanced by small margins (once per period say) means that you are in the game.

Now Tyler has just argued that the shots are the thing and he may be right (I think that this week may be a tough one for sure) but he admits that he hasn't seen many games (he has been on trial in K/W and now has been deported apparently ;) ) and I think that being outshot is one thing but being outchanced and outplayed is another.

By my eye the Oilers have not been particularly lucky and actually had quite a bit of bad luck early on.

Now I am certainly not over the moon yet and I think come the spring it will be the usual battle for a playoff spot. There are still too many holes up front but ....

For all of the naysayers there should also be some consideration that this club has been pounded by injuries and illness. Pisani has not played yet. Souray and Staios have been out and Chorney and Strudwick playing in their place. Stone, who has proven a fairly useful role player has gone down. Flu has knocked Brule from the lineup and Hemsky too. Horcoff is clearly not 100%.

Now how different does this club look with a few more of those guys at one hundred percent?

Oh well we will see how things go. As I said I am thinking that this week might be a bad one and all of the enthusiasm from Thursday will degenerate into the usual stupidity where wholesale trades and demotions are demanded. The positives that I will be looking for this week are as follows:

Will the PK continue to provide pretty solid work?

Will the new first line, if not as dominant as Thursday, still prove to have some staying power?

Can Smid keep it up? (This is fairly straight forward - I say yes)

Can Stortini continue to contribute the solid quality that he has been providing? (Again I would say absolutely yes)

Will Khabibulin continue to provide good work in goal?

As for further questions.

Can the kids on the backend (Chorney/Peckham) hang in there or will they be exposed?

Can Horcoff and wingers X and Y provide opposition as a tough minutes line and provide some offence as well? Who will X and Y be?

Presently the lineup looks as follows:

27/89/83

X/10/Y (with X=O'Sullivan and Y=Pisani I guess?)

18/13/46

And then still a bit of a mess.

I gather that this year will have plenty of ups and downs and I think planning the parade at this point would be foolish but I also think that burying this club as a product of luck doesn't really jive with what I have seen so far.

A Dublin Man Hits The Ice or How Kevin Dodd Found The Core of The Canadian Onion

In June of 2006 just as the Oilers were getting ready to take on the Hurricanes, three young men from Dublin came to Toronto to have training with our company. For two weeks they worked and then for the final week of their stay they hung out in the city.

Two of them were in their early twenties, the third about five years older. Terrific guys, all three of them, and they spent their time in Canada with the enthusiasm particular to young folks. Every night and weekend was spent doing something.

Of course I misspeak because when I was in Dublin in February of last year every moment not at work was also spent out and about. So never mind that earlier comment.

They did some touristy stuff and they did a lot of things that I have not done here in twenty years, kayaking in Lake Ontario, for example. They went out nearly every night and they went to the Falls and they did hot yoga. They came to my place for supper twice and afterwards we went to The Communist Bar for pints. On June 17th they arrived at Paupers (by the time they arrived the Oilers had the game well in hand) and when the joyous crowd roared they roared with us and afterwards we poured out into the warm night and down to the Cloak and Dagger and later into Parkdale until there wasn’t much left to us but sweaty grins after all the pints we drank.

They got to experience Toronto the way any city should be experienced, hand in hand with the locals. I was talking to a neighbour a few months ago about travelling and I compared it to an onion. The first time you go somewhere you’re seeing the outer layer. When you return a second time then you delve a little deeper and so it goes, you peel back a layer and each time you find something new and a little more interesting.

Certainly my trips to Dublin have followed this pattern. My first trip my wife and I went to the museums and the art galleries and the historical places of note. We walked about the southern side of the Liffey and we went to the Brazen Head and a few other famous pubs. We had a fine time but of course we had just scratched the surface. My second time there I stayed with one of the lads and saw fair Dublin from another side. Old dark pubs and a trip to Howth, dinners and roaming back streets and crooked alleys and drunken nights out with the Irish and a packed pub cheering on the national side in a Six Nations match at Croke Park and many hours on both sides of the Liffey just doing a wander.

A trip to remember.

Once again though I need to apologize because the whole onion comparison really makes no sense. Its not like once you have peeled back each layer of an onion, once you find the core, that you will find something delightful, like Liz Phair or a sandwich or a clitoris or a pint of stout.

You’re just going to find more onion.

Yet one of the lads found that core, the Canadian experience, something that he likely shares with, I would say, maybe a dozen of his countrymen, if that.

The men from Dublin got right into the Oilers’ run, most nights out they saw the games on TV and of course they knew that I was right into it. One of the guys had played roller hockey back home and had been ‘ice skating’ a few times in Dublin. At the time Capsule’s summer season had been in swing for a little while and actually the third day they were in country I hobbled in, recovering from the game the night before. We got to talking and he asked if it would be possible for him to get a game in with us.

Now I was skeptical given his pedigree and I certainly did not want his blood on my hands but I told him that I would check and the guy who runs our team said that he would be fine if he came out and dressed and skated around with us in the warmup. If he could actually skate then he might get a shift or two but he’d likely be parked on the bench.

Kev said he was alright with this and so I arranged for one of the guys who was going to be out of town to get me his equipment and we were all set.

We went to Bill Bolton on the Tuesday evening, this is a tiny little arena surrounded by a neighbourhood just north of Bloor Street, you park on the street, its tucked away amongst the century old brick homes and the gigantic trees. The arena is generally the temperature that it is outside and that night it was warm, as it was most of that June. The Irishman opened the bag in the tiny dressing room and stared for he had not the foggiest idea as to where he should start and so we instructed him on how to dress himself. As gametime approached it soon became clear that we were going to be short guys, that with the Dubliner we would have nine skaters, enough for two lines and three blueliners. As we heard the Zamboni rumble on its rounds our captain looked over.

Well, he said, if you can skate at all then you’re going to get to play half the game.

And when we got onto the ice it became clear that he could skate a little. And so away he went.

Luckily the team we were playing was quality but not over the top. It was a reasonable game, we lost five to two I believe, something like that and Kev did alright once he figured out where to line up on faceoffs (his first draw he was out for he was on the wrong side of the dot) and what an offside was (the first time one of our guys headed up ice with the puck he charged ahead of him excitedly, making a beeline for the net). We were killing ourselves laughing but the refs and the opposing squad were trying to figure out where we got the grown man who was playing like he had just joined the local Tykes team.

In the end he survived and he even got an assist, pushing the puck to one of our lads who stepped over the blueline and fired a shot that their goalie badly misplayed. Afterwards, as we peeled off our gear, he thanked all of us and remarked on how incredibly fit we were, that he was dying on his feet. Considering that he was 22 and was one of the fittest people I have ever seen and that we were who we were we all got a kick out of that.

And over pints afterwards in the pub around the corner from the rink he thanked me for one of the best times that he had ever had and what was, for him, the highlight of his trip here.

He'd found the heart of the onion.

--------------------

Patrick O'Sullivan tore up the AHL a few years back and put up a pretty reasonable season for the Kings two years back but missing training camp last season seemed to send him off the rails and when he came to the Oilers at the deadline the early rejoicing at a slick deal for twenty games of Erik Cole was soon replaced by a 'here we go again' sinking feeling as O'Sullivan, like so many before him, arrived in Edmonton with pedigree but never got untracked. He looked lost for every one of his games as an Oiler and so his season, like most of his new teammates, ended in disappointment. In the summer whenever the future of the Oilers was discussed he was an afterthought, future tradebait more or less.

Along with Penner, Smid and Brule, O'Sullivan has been one of the early surprises for the Oilers this season and he seems to be getting better game after game, by my eye. He is what I like to call a player, like Gilbert, he just knows his way around the ice by my eye. He's not perfect, of course, but with a little bit more luck (at least two posts so far) he'd have four goals and he's just under a point a game. He has helped shore up what was a miserable PK. He can skate and he can win the puck battles and he's a playmaker and he doesn't stay on the perimeter and both his setup of Penner against No Longer Wild on Jack Lemaire and his goal against the Canucks came after getting up after getting knocked about a little so he's showing something in that department as well.

Its early early still but he's playing with quite a bit of confidence and one expects that he will either find his way to Hemsky's line or he will form the basis of a nice line to do some damage to the soft minutes, maybe along with Penner and Gagner.

Good stuff and good for the little man who had a pretty tough go of it as a kid.

A Watery Grave

We had been back in Canada for a few weeks back in 2001 when I got invited to an old university pal’s place for some drinks. One of the old gang was back in town from BC for a couple of weeks and so a half dozen of us got together for some Thai takeout and some beers. A few of the guys had been out to my wedding on the Island just two months before but I had not seen our host or the guest of honour in years and years. The fellow whose house we got together at was the first of us to get established. Except for one other guy the rest of us had all just gotten married in the previous year. We were all still renters. None of us had kids. Your man had a daughter almost a year old, a beautiful big semi detached home in an expensive part of town, a very lucrative career and he was almost completely bald. So while the rest of us, now in our early thirties, were on the cusp of adulthood (mortgage, kids, job with responsibility) he was already long on his way, right down to the look.

It was a Thursday night and I had to work the next day, as did the rest of us, but just like old times (and this being PK – PreKids) we roared through our beers pretty quick. While the wiser amongst us were sated our buddy from away and myself were not and our host, recognizing an opportunity, decided that now was a good time to get rid of a couple of bottles of homemade white wine that his father had gifted to him. Even in our state we recognized pretty quickly that we were drinking something somewhere between battery acid and high octane gasoline (leaded) but being pretty senseless, as noted before, we managed to help a brother and clean him out.

Jumped on the subway and swayed back and forth as it zoomed south a few stops, hit St. Clair station and stumbled out into the pouring rain for the short walk back to our apartment. It was maybe a ten minute walk, if that, right through a very tony neighbourhood but like JF Jacques trying to score his first NHL goal I soon began to find what seemed inevitable (walk west for ten minutes, fumble with key, fall into bed) was actually quite impossible. I was soaked to the skin in a moment and as I tried to plant one foot before the other in the fog before my eyes and in my mind, I decided that what I might need to do is to take a short nap.

And so I laid down right on someone’s front lawn, right beside the sidewalk, a house worth millions of dollars I am sure, laying back, mouth agape, likely I would have drowned like the proverbial turkey staring up into the storm or more likely, ended up in a cell overnight, drying out. Luckily for me I wasn’t there long when someone shook me gently and asked me if I was alright.

Now I am not the sharpest dresser. In fact one time whilst sitting against a wall on Bloor Street waiting for a pal to come by and pick me up a passerby actually flipped me a loonie. Having said that I’m pretty obviously not homeless on most days and so I must have looked not like a guy down on his luck but really what I was, a young guy who was pretty full. So I staggered to my feet and said I was walking home and when he found out where I lived he walked me to my apartment building (even shielding me under his umbrella, one thing I never carry, along with a cell phone and a wristwatch) and made sure I got in the door ok.

Nice fellow, that.

---------------

Now its pretty clear that if Dustin Penner were walking home in a rainstorm and found Craig MacTavish passed out he would probably roll him into a ditch and hold him down and we all know that the feeling is most definitely mutual.

There have been many pleasant surprises so far this season. Ladislav Smid has been wonderful and while the coaching change (and just plain old experience) may have been a factor for him, isn’t it interesting to note that this is the second straight year that a young defenceman has taken a leap while getting major minutes with Lubo Visnovsky. This is a simplification of course as Grebeshkov had come on pretty well near the end of his first season with the Oilers and Smid has not been exclusively partnered with Lubo but if and when Theo Peckham or Taylor Chorney get full time employment in the NHL it might be an idea to partner them with the little Slovak waterbug.

And there is Gilbert Brule who is now at a PPG pace and who scored two goals and hit a post on Friday night, all while playing with Jacques and Stone. Of course they were also on for a GA where they were all running around like Matt Greene and Marc Andre Bergeron in spring 2006 but I think that would be expected at times. In any case Brule has had a pretty positive impact and I am pretty sure that nobody saw that coming. I certainly did not.

And Taylor Chorney has looked pretty reasonable by my eye as a fillin for the injured veterans on top of everything.

But nobody has looked as good or has been as big of a surprise as Dustin Penner.

Now it is only seven games in and seven games doesn’t suddenly make this an amazing signing as someone commented over one the game day thread on Friday night (where are all of those guys who slagged the Penner signing now was the question). Penner has always left us wanting more and even his defenders who pointed out his good underlying numbers could not defend his conditioning, his lack of urgency, his, well, laziness. If you’re making truckloads of money then showing up at camp fat and getting pushed off the puck by smaller men and essentially being a disinterested spectator for two years is completely unacceptable and the fact is that if this type of player was able to impact the underlying numbers in a positive manner as demonstrated by Derek Zona repeatedly then its all the more maddening.

I don’t think anyone expects Penner to be a vicious killer, its not in his nature, although a few more throwdowns like what he laid on Regher on opening night would certainly be welcome. But the expectation is that he should drive the net and be impossible to handle down low and that a man his size with those hands should be a guy who can be a gamebreaker, much like he was Friday night. The goal on the O’Sullivan pass was a gimme (and speaking of players little O’Sullivan is a beauty) but the play on his second goal was sublime, the rush out of his own end and the hard crossice pass to Gagner and then roaring to the net, pass his check (who could not have handled him anyway) and then the finish on the return pass (note that he roofed it too – the guy knows what to do in close) had me off the couch, cock in hand, shouting with delight.

Penner obviously came into camp determined to prove something which is wonderful but disappointing at the same time – he obviously had it in him these past two years and for whatever reason chose not to tap it. The tendency is to blame MacTavish for all of this mess and while I was no fan of the old coach last season I don’t think that relationship would have gone south if the big man had shown up from day one in the condition he is in now. MacT was always of the mind that Penner could and should be a bigger factor and it must really grate his tit to see the early returns under the new regime for his old nemesis.

Penner’s role is up in the air now, one wonders if he will be asked to kickstart the struggling duo on the top line or whether he will be expected to carry a soft minutes trio with a couple of the kids. Hard to say but he has the coach’s confidence and if he can keep it up then this club is going to look a lot better as it hits the dog days of the season, much more so than if he were a bored and listless passenger as he was so many times over the last two years. Still a long way to go but a big winger who can put the puck in the net is what this club needs more than anything, I would say, and who knew that the guy that they were looking for would be under their nose all of this time.

A State Of Bliss

My beautiful boy turned four on Tuesday.

Like most who are young he is in a hurry to grow up much of the time. For some reason his frame of reference is being nine years old. When he is nine years old he will be tall. When he is nine years old he will be able to stay up. When he is nine years old he can drink coffee and beer.

Last year he wanted a pirate party and so I took the bull by the horns. I made personalized invites with little maps and messages, along the likes of "Come to the parrrrrty or ye'll be made to walk the plank", rubbing them with teabags so they got that parchment look.

The little ones came and got their faces painted and then we adjourned to the basement where I told them a tale of scurvy dogs and storm seas and pieces of eight. They boarded a merchant ship and made the crew (their dads) walk the plank and obtained a treasure map which led them on a merry hunt through the house to find their treasure.

Good times. Quality.

This year the boy took another tact. Unlike his sister who planned her party and designed her cake, he stated that he would have no party this year. Instead he wanted nobody in the house but his family and we would eat waffles and open his presents and that would be the end of it.

Which was fine with us. He's definitely his own man.

The only complication was the cake. My wife makes every birthday cake in our house from scratch. For my fortieth she made an Oilers' crest. She has made cartoon characters, a train, a treasure chest.

She asked me what I wanted this year but its unlikely to happen, she only does G rated work. Damn!

So the boy wanted Spiderman. This one was very detailed, her biggest challenge yet. We did the usual cake making dance that we always do every time she makes one of these. Early in the night:

I hope he likes it.

I'm sure he will.

If I screw it up then he will be so upset.

It will be fine. He will love it.

Late in the night she throws down the piping tool in dismay.

I can't do this. Oh my God I have ruined his birthday. Its not going to work at all.

It will be fine, you've barely even started. Its going to be great.

And of course it turned out terrific.

She slept in on Monday and the boy was up first. I was getting breakfast ready and he was loitering beside the fridge like a teenager outside a Mac's Milk before they start with the opera music.

Don't you look in that fridge, I warned him.

And so he paced back and forth, periodically requesting a look at the cake, me denying him until his mother got up. And when she finally traipsed down the stairs he rushed over and she told him to stand back and lifted the cake out of the fridge and he took a look and hugged her fiercely and repeated over and over again.

ITS GOT WORDS! ITS GOT WORDS!

For Spiderman was wishing him a happy birthday.

--------------------------------

Oiler fans viewed the game against Chicago with a mixture of fear and levity. The team has been better than expected so far and Minnesota and Calgary have struggled somewhat while Vancouver has run into injuries and the expectation is that Colorado will fall back to earth.

They have been outshot and outchanced but even the shot margin in Nashville belied the game, I think. They have played fairly well and have actually had some awful luck and while the club has plenty of holes they have played a pleasing style and the results so far have probably been pretty fair.

Nearly every team has holes. Chicago really does not have many. And so here was a test against an elite club. And we fans kind of expected the worst, all the while hoping that the unexpected would happen.

The good news for the Oilers so far is that they have done reasonably well despite injuries (Souray, Pisani, Staios) and a lack of offensive production from many of their big guns (Souray, Visnovsky, Gilbert, Horcoff). Plus Hemsky has really been no hell so far either.

The goaltending has been getting better. Grebeshkov has been scoring. Smid has been really quite good (there I've said it). They have had scoring from up and down the lineup, seven players with two goals or more, six players with five points or more, including a scrub (Brule), a fourth liner (Cogliano) and an afterthought (Comrie).

And so far Quinn has been able to hide the scrubeenies throughout the lineup.

Until last night.

Read the game day threads and you get the impression that this team is awfully shitty. Of course read the game day threads when this team is winning and you get the impression that this team is awfully shitty anyways. A part of me would like to think that all fans are like this but its not really the case. I've read the threads at AtoY, for example, and you certainly don't come away with the viewpoint that the majority of the club should be a) traded b) demoted c) executed in the street. Even when they win.

I made the point over at LT's last night that Chicago is a far far better club. That's just the way it is. There's no Strudwick or Chorney on the back end, although to be fair to Chorney he has done ok so far. And if Ethan Moreau belongs on the fourth line, as we all agree, then ask yourself who on the Oilers is a poorer player right now. Jacques. Stone. Brule. Probably Stortini although the kid keeps rising in my estimation.

Now apply that same test to the Hawks. Big, fast, young. Is there anyone in their forwards who is a weaker player than Moreau? Maybe Colin Fraser or Jack Skille? And as you go up the depth chart they overmatch the Oilers all the way I would say. Or close to it.They have quality right through that lineup, up and down it and so its no surprise that while the Oilers hung with them for about ten minutes it would have been a rout except for Khabibulin after that.

So its disappointing. No "ITS GOT WORDS" for us Oiler fans but no reason to slink off into the night muttering dark imprecations against anyone wearing copper and blue.

Khabibulin had a terrific game again and it looks like, so far, the goaltending might be a strength now that he has his early seaosn yips out of the way.

Smid looks to be the real deal. Think about that. The strength of this club is their D and it looks like they now have five quality blueliners, three who are still kids.

Chorney wasn't completely overmatched. Another win for procurement perhaps?

Penner is now averaging over a point per game and it may be very soon that he ends up with Horcoff and Hemsky. When Pisani returns then that will mean one more NHL player and one less scrub to hide. Its becoming pretty clear that Penner might be turning the corner in terms of results; playing him with 10 and 83 is probably what this club needs.

The problem then is that they are still short of quality forwards and they have to rejig the lines but Jacques is an anchor for the first line. It has to be done.

And one last thing. The Oilers stuck it out and nearly stole a point or two at the end and they do deserve credit for that. They did not fold up the tents when it became apparent that they were overmatched. They hung around, thanks to Khabibulin, and they came on in the end and nearly pulled the upset. Good stuff and fair play to them for that.

Chicago is quality, serious quality. And Hossa has not even suited up for them yet. I always hesitate to bury the Wings but I saw them get waxed by Buffalo the other night. Lidstrom looks to me to have lost a step and they were no match for the speedy Sabres. Its just one game but this Chicago team looks to be ready to make that leap.

So losing to them, considering? Not that big a deal really. They are going to run over most clubs on most nights I think. Better to worry about the Minnesotas and Colorados of the world right now.

After Monday Bruce's Love Has To Be As Deep As An Ocean

Its true. Bruce did come to Stortini on a summer's breeze. I believe that he touched Zorg in a raging blizzard though, not the falling rain. I wasn't there but I heard about it one time when I was at this bar. Or did I read about it in Hello!

Can't remember.

Anyhow, congrats to Bruce, we know how proud you must be. A fine moment for Bruce Jr. Here's hoping for many more.