I have recently re-discovered the joys of skating. A couple springs ago, I bought a pair of Reeboks skates while they were 50% off. They got stuck in a box when I moved a couple months later, and forgotten about: unsharpened, incorrectly laced-up, with the price tags still on. I moved to Toronto this fall, only to find my new skates again. It took me a while to get around to getting them sharpened.
Once I started to skate again, memories—of standing around in the first hockey practices of the fall shifting, from foot to foot, as so I could pretend the pain in my feet was not there—surfaced again for the first time in over ten or more years. I guess they make skates out of some kind of composite armor that is a bitch to break in: my wet shock trick didn’t do anything but freeze my feet into the skates (it works for combat boots so why not skates? Oh, I skate outside).
I decided I couldn’t afford hockey equipment, this year—Damn! The prices of sticks these-days, breaks a graduate student’s pocketbook—even the old Stastny or Coffey Sherwoods are over fifty bucks. But I did get a nice new jock & can (as I can remember random pucks and sticks well), as well as a few pucks before I decided I should to re-learn how to skate before I picked up a hockey stick.
So I have been skating around on outdoor rinks as of the last few weeks: just big loops around some choppy piece of ice always with beautiful women. No really: my roommate, women I am interested in, a six year-old princess, & some friends. There is more talking and flirting then I remember when as a child I went skating with the ‘boys’. Not that a couple of these ladies are not far superior skaters to me. They often end up skating circles around my, while I am sweating and gasping for breath. Damn it has been a few fun weeks, and unlike the recent Oiler’s play it has create a bunch of great memories.
This is the worst season of memories, by the Oilers, that I can ever remember. I watch religiously through the nineties . . . even after I quit hockey to be in musical theatre and modern dance (see interest in women). I know I get to watch the Holy Trinity* and Omark dance in the offensive zone, as well as Petry & Peckham really fill out their games: overall it is the best rookie crop I have ever seen in orange and blue silks. But I hate it. I want to watch the Oilers win games, and be in the playoff race—even if it means spring disappointment: cause often spring disappointment means we have some good moments at the end of April.
So since we are only talking about next season (I mean virtually every blog is on board with this: it easy to talk about this season: i.e. “Did you see _______ last night, He was great, and still so young. Too bad the rest of the team is undermanned and the systems suck.”). Here is my list of untouchables . . . I did this a couple seasons ago, and boy was I wrong. Here are a couple highlights:
a) Tambo on the ‘Untouchable List’. I must have been drunk on something or just really desperate to have said this: “we have been begging for an upper office manger who has experience and not one of the old boys, we finally got one: lets give him a chance.”
b) Having both then goaltenders on the ‘On the Edge List’. Oh and I am talking about: Jeff Drouin-Deslauriers (“the only Hopeful part of the three headed monster”) and Dwayne Roloson (“we need a veteran goalie for our Utopia”). Seriously, I had delusions the JDD might not suck and Roloson would be a good veteran mentor between the pipes. Actually one of those statements turned out to be true.
c) My ‘Can’t be moved (unless we pull a Mogilny) List’ was completely out to lunch. I had Staios (that netted us a third round pick) & Cap’t Two-Minute-Minor (how the BJ’s claimed off waivers: we really should have sent flowers after that one-night stand) solidly in the mix. Cole eventual got trade too, but that has been Tambo’s biggest bust. Lastly, I had the pugilists—SMac and Zorg—on this list, cause I never think fighters have value on the trade market . . . well, I might have been wrong about the man once called HuggyBear, but the lumbering goon needs to get waived—WHAT THE FUCK, TAMBO! Sorry about the allcaps.
d) The ‘Trade Bait List’ includes those that were just that (Garon, Grebeshkov, and Brodziak) with a couple players that got releases/bought-out (Pouliot & Nilsson). The jury is still out on the rest.
e) I correctly predicted that Chad ‘camp mendelbaum’ Moreau and Pete Peeters would be fired, and I did ask the question of Kelly Buchburger (“what is his experience? what is his roll?”). I still don’t know the answer. I am too embarrassed to repeat what I said about Lowe and MacT.
This year’s list:
‘Untouchable List’
Taylor Hall—Best natural talent on the team, and will be its most dominate player for the next 5 or 6 seasons.
Magnus Paajarvi-Svensson—Too talent to give up on because of a little slow start moving form the SEL to the NHL. Wouldn't be a bad idea to hire a veteran Swede—in the off season (maybe on the back end)—for the room vis-à-vis the Pääjärvi Ghost, Omark, & Lander.
Shawn Horcoff—It doesn't matter if he could be included on the ‘Can’t be moved (unless we pull a Mogilny) List’: it is irrelavent. Right now, the Mighty Russian has to teach the defensive side of the game to the youngen’ on the run against the hardest competition. I am not going to check the advance stats, cause that is what I see.
Jordan Eberle—The smartest play of the Three. ‘nough said.
Ladislav Smid, Theo Peckham & Jeff Petry—Smid's birthday is today and 26 years old: he has a 1.3 Million year contract that expires this year but is an RFA. Peckham is in the same boat but with a 0.55 million contract: plus he is 23 only years old. Petry is also 23 years old, but this is his first pro season and only makes 1 Million for this year and next . . . still a RFA. Together they should make a solid 4-5-6 defenseman, at minimum, and have the ability to fill in for bigger rolls. What that is going to cost us what? Like maybe 4 million in cap-space to sign all of them next season: most likely cheaper. I wouldn’t think about moving these parts, but just adding to them (see below).
‘On the Edge List’
Sam Gagner—I personally think trading him is a stupid and selfish idea. Trade from a weakness (centre) to fill another need, when the part of the weakness you are trading is not actually the weakness. See Gagner is type casted as not the big-number-one-center that we ‘need’. What we need is a health Horcoff and another competent centre, because a depth of two is not enough.
Tom Gilbert and Ryan Whitney—Well this are two prototype-defensemen that I want playing with the three young dmen that I called untouchables. The problem is neither one of them us good enough to be a real ‘Number 1 Dman’! I really mean it; I loved to have these two players for most if not all their current contracts (four million over the next three and two years). I’d trade one, if that had to happen to up grade the position, but they would be a significant piece going back (maybe with prospects but not anything exciting).
J-F Jacques & Steve MacIntyre—They have no value, and lots of backers (Management and Coaching, respectively) in the organization. They are wastes of contract spaces, and wastes of roster spaces. Please save us now, this cannot be happening.
‘Can’t be moved (unless we pull a Mogilny) List’
Gilbert Brule, Kurtis Foster & Colin Fraser—They suck. I said the same thing about a lot of players that were traded last time around: plus a bunch of them got a lot of value back. I just can’t see any other GM want these players this year. They all have contracts that run into next year and have underperformed.
Nikolai Khabibulin—He is a drunk. Signed over 35 years old, makes a shit-tonne of money, and is terrible.
Jason Strudwick—What does he do again? He has no value, but I have been wrong before.
Zack Stortini—Zorg just got waived. I say he gets picked up. I hope he does, I liked him.
‘Trade Bait List’
Dustin Penner, Ales Hemsky & Linus Omark—Too many skilled, talented wingers, and not enough top-flight defense and a centremen with a brain. I have been vocal about Hanzal and Weber, but that is hardly an original idea. The important part is identifying which wingers will perform better and getting them under reasonable contracts. Then trading the other one or two for the missing parts we need (the two mentioned in this paragraph and between the pipes).
Andrew Cogliano—What position does he play? I really do not think it is centre, or wing: maybe it is Rover? He needs to be moved to top 6 forward, on the wing. Right now there is too many young skilled wingers ahead of him and even more veterans . . . what to do? I’d either trade him or trade two of the above wingers and move him up to see what he can do as a winger playing with actual talent. The problem is that Tambo has not displayed the ability to make solid acquisitions at the deadline: the Cole for Patty’O and the Czech shot was a terrible deal. His selling for draft picks and small deals in the summer ‘record’ is much better. The Oilers need to address their long term weakness before Cogliano gets a fair shot at the wing—Tambo moves too slow for this to happen.
Jim Vandermeer—I think Lowetide says he might just be worth the most, but that man writes too much for me to ever quote him. I tend to agree. He is gone or hurt by the trade deadline.
Ryan Jones—Trade him, now! Before he loses any value. It is fine if he turns out great on another team, we need extra bullets for the ‘Magnificent’ Bastards gun.
Jeff Deslauriers & Martin Gerber—If the Barons are looking to make a playoff run, then both should be kept around. Maybe they should add a 5th or 7th round pick and get another skilled forward to help this platoon out. If not, and you would have to think the Oilers want the Barons to make the playoffs in their first year, you trade one of them for sixth or seventh round draft pick as to get some value out of their expiring contacts
Devan Dubnyk—Why not trade him? I don’t think he is the answer going forward, but I don’t know what is. Goalies are crazy. With the Booz’en Wall here he is getting kinda fucked.
* Hall, Jordan Eberle, and the Pääjärvi Ghost
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