The Other Off Season Game Plan - Oilers Edition

Big disclaimer - I know very little about hockey as compared to Scott Cullen, residential fanatic analytic expert (read; stats geek) over at TSN. But I do have an armchair and computer and also like to sit in front of it from time to time and think about our great game of hockey. So when I read that Scott is pulling together his personal game plan for each team in the NHL, I thought I would do the same, only not get paid for it.

But to do what Scott does it would mean I have some idea of what Scott is saying and either agree or disagree with him. I don't know any of these new stats that is all the talk this year. To me a Corsi will always be that type of dog the Queen has or a small moped. Nor do I know anything about the Oilers farm team or for that matter, anything about the team's morale. I'm just an outsider looking in, kinda like an unwanted therapist or that drunk guy sitting alone at the bar who wants to join your conversation but you don't want to appear rude.

So let's start with his first team to suffer the wrath of the new rage of analytic analysis for anal analytics; The Edmonton Oilers.

From the History Files - The 2013 NHL intro for Brits

(ok, back in the day, being 2012-13 season, I wrote this and got it published somewhere online. I'm busy with the Nanowrimo thinger going on but in the meantime, enjoy this piece of history)

Looking to widen your sports knowledge to something outside of the local football league? Perhaps you are looking to butter up those Canadian tourists that wandered into your bar and will tend to tip way too much if someone mentions hockey around them. Whatever your reasons, welcome home.

Last year I started submitting some posts to WhatCulture about the NHL, voted by 3o million Canadians, 54 Swedes, and Danny Taylor of Plymouth, England as being THE #1 hockey league in the world. The NHL stands to begin it's 94th year of play (give or take) next month. And this year is no different as there is much excitement in the maple syrup-flavoured air, hockey-stank excitement. Nobody in Canada has been this excited about the NHL starting up since last season when it finally began after another epic Lock-Out, which will be discussed later.

In what went down as the greatest Stanley Cup Finals ever played since 2012, the Chicago Blackhawks stunned the Boston Bruins with 2 goals in the final 90 seconds in Game 6 to clinch hockey's greatest trophy. It was karmic retaliation of sorts, for the Bruins had earlier made the biggest comeback in history to defeat the Toronto Maple Leafs in Game 7 of a playoff series earlier which everybody outside of Toronto found hilarious. If none of that made any sense to you, welcome to...

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW OF THE NHL AS A NON-FAN;

All you need to know is this; The NHL is crazy. There is nothing rational about it, either on the ice or off. It was the subject of the greatest sports movie ever made, and has some of the best haircuts ever. It once had two players that dominated the sport like no other athlete has ever dominated a sport yet they played at the same time. Imagine Maradona and Pele playing at the same time, and on occasion even on the same team to defeat the world's worst superpower and #2 hockey nation (no, not America, the other one).

This moment knocked the 1972 Summit Series off the #1 hockey moment
of all time - yes, it is of someone crying. 

THE EASY STUFF;

The regular season starts in October, is 82 games long, and lasts for about six months.
Playoffs start in April and go for about three months. There is no 'one game take all' playoffs; this is all about maximizing owner revenue so the teams are forced to play four rounds of best-of-seven's, which in reality is quite brilliant. The first team to win four games over their opponent moves on to the next round and possibly gets a break while waiting for their opponents to inflict maximum pain on each other.

They play for a large trophy called the Stanley Cup, named after Lord Stanley. It is so rare, there are only 3 replicas of it in existence (the presentation one, the touring one, and the one at the Hockey Hall of Fame. The original is kept in a safe at the Hall of Fame as well and is no bigger than a large salad bowl, which was probably it's original intention).

Canadians start talking about hockey about 2 months before the regular season starts. This is called the 'pre-season' and in reality mean nothing unless you are a Toronto fan, then it defines the rest of your season, saving you all sorts of heartbreak later on.

This photo deserves to be a bit more viral.

Retro Post - What you need to know, the nhl 2013

- just a blast from the past. As in last year. A rejected piece that will now see the light of the Internet for the first time. 

The National Hockey League is Crazy; What you Need to Know About the 2013 NHL Season

Is this a lock-out year or not?

  Looking to widen your sports knowledge to something outside of the local football league? Perhaps you are looking to butter up those Canadian tourists that wandered into your bar and will tend to tip way too much if someone mentions hockey around them. Whatever your reasons, welcome home.

 Last year I started submitting some posts to WhatCulture about the NHL, voted by 3o million Canadians, 54 Swedes, and Danny Taylor of Plymouth, England as being THE #1 hockey league in the world. The NHL stands to begin it’s 94th year of play (give or take) next month. And this year is no different as there is much excitement in the maple syrup-flavoured air, hockey-stank excitement. Nobody in Canada has been this excited about the NHL starting up since last season when it finally began after another epic Lock-Out, which will be discussed later.

 In what went down as the greatest Stanley Cup Finals ever played since 2012, the Chicago Blackhawks stunned the Boston Bruins with 2 goals in the final 90 seconds in Game 6 to clinch hockey’s greatest trophy. It was karmic retaliation of sorts, for the Bruins had earlier made the biggest comeback in history to defeat the Toronto Maple Leafs in Game 7 of a playoff series earlier which everybody outside of Toronto found hilarious. If none of that made any sense to you, welcome to…

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW OF THE NHL AS A NON-FAN;

Wayne Gretzky IS Luke Skywalker...

While this was already published by the UK webzine, Whatculture this is also part of my ongoing attempt to catalog/save/remember past articles. However, for this special blog post, I've added my own photos for the most part as I don't think the UK editors really knew who i was talking about. 

Enjoy the read... 

NHL 8 Reasons Hockey is Perfect for Star Wars Geeks

or

How I learned to stop worrying and just rip off other people...

Being given an opportunity to introduce the world of the great sport of ice hockey into the WhatCulture’s vast canon of subjects didn’t come without its own set of problems. Specifically, how do you start? With an explanation of the rules? Boring. Perhaps an overview of the top players and teams? Only if you already knew the game. The best fights in one of the only professional sports that condones fighting? Potentially next time… How about the way that Hollywood has portrayed the sport? Now, we are getting somewhere.

Now to associate it with Star Wars in some way…

Being a predominantly UK-based pop-culture website, it can be understandable that most of our sports coverage discusses football, what with its rabid fan base, history of passion, the occasional riot and world-wide acceptance. In North America there is a sport that has many of those characteristics and it’s not American football or professional baseball.

The one sport that parallels football, at least in countries in where it snows, is hockey.

First lesson; hockey is not referred to as ‘ice hockey’ by those that know the game, much as football is not referred to as ‘foot-soccer’. Just getting that out of the way.

Simply stated, the goal in hockey is to beat your opponent’s team by getting an object (the puck) into their net more times than they do in yours. To make the game move faster, the puck is propelled forward by a stick, the surface is covered in ice and players strap blades of steel to their feet called skates.

Basically, it’s football on meth, as designed by people with short tempers and limited attention spans. Due to the high rates of speed, players can either turn quickly in a circle (if they are European) or hit into each other and start again (if they are North American).

As a primer to the introduction of this great game and the dysfunctional league under which the top athletes of the world come to make vast (or little) amounts of money (depending on who you talk to) a comparison of hockey’s modern day history to the greatest movie franchise of all time seems as good as way as any to its introduction to WhatCulture’s readership.

Star Wars is a movie steeped in tradition, with heroic figures, interesting side characters, evil shadowy villains and run by a large unknown group of marketing executives who would do anything to make a buck, hiding behind the public face of the franchise, George Lucas. The National Hockey League (or NHL herewith) is a league steeped in tradition, heroic figures, interesting side characters, evil shadowy villains and run by a large group of team owners who would do anything to make a buck, hiding behind the public face of NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman.

For example, just last year, after declaring record league-wide revenue hockey team owners unanimously decided to lock out their own players from training camp because they felt the players were making too much money, which would eventually destroy the league. This is like saying making too many Star Wars ‘collectibles’ would ultimately result in no more Star Wars movies. Yet Disney just bought the entire Star Wars franchise for all the money in the known world because anything with a Star Wars logo on it seems to make more money. The NHL team owners claimed to be on the cusp of bankruptcy, despite the same owners recently beginning to shell out decade-long contracts for decent players that have little collectible value, like a present day David Beckham jersey.

If you look at the history of hockey compared to the original Star Wars trilogy that’s not where the similarities end. Here are 8 more ways hockey is the perfect sport for Star Wars geeks, in particular because of a certain Wayne Gretzky…

The NHL. What you Need to Know. Part 1 of 4

The NHL, voted by 3o million Canadians, 54 Swedes, and Danny Taylor of Plymouth, England as being THE #1 hockey league in the world stands to begin it's 94th year of play (give or take) next month.

Here is what you need to know about this year's teams, all anxious to try to relive the pace and glory of last year's shortened 48 game season by starting 4 months earlier and returning to an 82 game (give or take) schedule.

The NHL continues to make a mockery of consistent rules, divisions and Canadian hockey fans by continuing to allow teams to play in such tropical destinations as Florida, Texas and Arizona where one can see a professional hockey team for cheaper than attending a local high school's drama class production of Oklahoma.

where the hell is the Smythe area of North America?

Gone are the six divisions that meant nothing for the last 20 years replaced by four divisions that still mean nothing. The new structure still means each conference will have 8 teams that qualify for the playoffs but in keeping with it's unusual scoring system, the following method will be used to keep fans confused until the final days of the regular season when they learn if their team has qualified or not.

From NHL.com; 

The top three teams in each division will make up the first 12 teams in the playoffs. The remaining four spots will be filled by the next two highest-placed finishers in each conference -- regardless of division -- based on regular-season points. It will be possible for one division to send five teams to the postseason while the other sends three.

The seeding of the wild-card teams within each divisional playoff will be determined by regular-season points. The division winner with the most points in the conference will be matched against the wild-card team with the fewest points; the division winner with the second-most points in the conference will play the wild-card team with the second-fewest points.

Simple. And how does a team get these points to qualify for the playoffs?

Just nod and move on...

A team gets 2 points for a straight-up win. If both teams tie, they each get a point. They play a 5 minute overtime session, at which time each team is minus 1 player. If someone scores, the winning team gets 2 points and the losing team gets 1 point. If nobody scores in extra time, the teams go to a shoot out where players take turns trying to score on breakaways (much like a penalty kick). If they score, that goal doesn't count as a goal on their point totals but their team could win, as long as the other team doesn't score. Eventually, everyone gets bored and they all go home and wait for the NHL statisticians to tell us what happened.

As I said you don't really need to worry about it. Chances are your team will just make or just miss the playoffs thanks to the league's continual attempt to ensure team parity. Just pick a team then come back in April.

On to the teams!

Who looks like the 2013 Trade Geniuses; 1st Day on the New Job

It's always important to judge a trade by the very first game that the recent victims/rental players participate in with their new team. After all, they don't know anybody yet, nobody has tried to hit on their girlfriends and reporters are madly trying to get their first angle for a news story on the 'new guy'. So here's the immediate winners from the NHL trade deadline day;

Tampa Bay Lightning;

the O on his jersey could be called 'fore-shadowing'or 
amount of Lightning fans who had heard of Ben Bishop.

Ben Bishop earns a shut out with his first game of the Bolts, the first in new Coach Cooper's career with a 5-0 rout over the always dangerous Carolina Hurricanes, champion of both North and South Carolina.
Bishop stopped 45 shots for his first win for Tampa Bay which unfortunately means that unless he continues to post a 1000 save % for the rest of the season, there is nowhere to go but down.

I am extremely happy with you guys right now,
don't confuse this with my mad face.

New York Rangers

This team looks like geniuses right now (yes, tortorella is still their coach). Ryan Clowe gets 2 goals and an assist, Derek Brassard formerly of Columbus gets 1G 3A and John Moore also scores a goal in their first showing in Rangers uniforms. Clowe gets calls from Mark Messier asking to be in on the next photo op, but Clowe wisely declines.

The 2013 NHL Trade Deadline Recap (for realsies too)

so much hockey bullshit to feast on...

After a testosterone-laden 8 hours, the NHL trade deadline has passed with only one surprise to me; that  an old-fashioned real trade that could easily be emulated in certain hockey pools run by competent, efficient team managers that understand it takes something to get something. Unfortunately, I'm not in one of those types of pools so i will just have to sit back and wait for Edmonton to return to it's former glory.
Thankfully, Columbus and the New York Rangers did something that made waiting 6 hours for TSN updates worth it.

It was a busy morning as sports anchors and analysts tried to look busy in finding something to say about the deadline, as per annual tradition and it wasn't until near the end of the day that things apparently heated up. By then, GM's finally had responded to all their emails that had accumulated from various opinionated arm-chair coaches and did their thing.

Here's my few worthy observations;

Biggest Surprise of the Day; Marian Gaborik would waive his no-trade clause to go to Columbus
Maybe he just doesn't know where Columbus is (technically, neither do I) but it's a good fit; Gaborik can go score goals somewhere nobody has heard of him and Columbus gets that potential goal scorer to replace Rick Nash. Plus, Columbus is doing surprisingly okay this year with Bobrovsky in net, making Steve Mason expendable, which i will get to later.

How and How Not to Have a Hockey Fight

First; let's start with these two guys who will go down in history as 'those two guys who had a great fight not-fight'.

One of these guys apparently represents the Cornwall River Kings, which is so close to Corn hole that it's too easy.  I don't know who the other team is.  A google search tells me that they are both tough guys and are playing in the NAHL, which is basically a french (you can tell by their names) semi-pro league (you can tell by the ice).  Plus, NAHL stands for Nord America Hockey League.  Nord is french for North. I think.

So let's see how to have a real hockey fight;

I am sure it's just a coincidence that at the top are two french guys, at the bottom there are two not french guys.  I think Don Cherry is calling me to go out for some pops now.

But in all fairness, it's not just because they are in different leagues.  Here's another classic not-fight between two guys that aren't french.  One of them is actually Irish, which makes this slightly more embarrassing as he went on to become quite the punching bag in later tilts with Mark Messier and Wendell Clark, to name a few.

And back to Hockey

How quick we forget...

Yes, i know different times and all that but when i heard about this 'amazing' goal by St. Louis Blues rookie Victor Tarantino (somethin' like that) with a certain Vancouver sportscaster already calling it in contention for the move of the year and who, according to said sportscaster, deked a Detroit player so badly on his second goal the Red Wing wound up sitting in the front row nursing his broken ego and a bucket of popcorn watching this young star.  Trying to jump-start my enthusiasm for the Return of the Ice Age 3, I had to witness this amazing gift to goal highlights myself.

And this is what i saw;

Yeah, okay...not exactly the second coming of Fabian Brunnstromm but I seriously don't think those goals were that amazing.  Maybe it was because it was opening night of a long delayed season, maybe because it was the Lidstrom-less Detroit Red Wings getting spanked or maybe just because something doesn't sound right when you have an adjective like 'amazing' describing anyone on the St. Louis Blues.


Or maybe because this is something like what i expected (ignore JR for the moment);

I remember seeing this game and in particular this goal.  It was incredible.  And amazing.  This was the loathed Edmonton Oilers in their fading prime but still a contender.  Chicago was in the midst of that whole 40 years without a cup thing.  I watched because i think Denis Savard was the second cousin to my cousin, whatever that means.  Well, when you are a teenager playing hockey, that practically meant Savard was family.  Yet, even so I did not expect to see anything like this goal.

So to compare;
the St. Louis Blue new kid on the block deked out Kyle "not-lidstrom" Quincey and then got the puck past Jimmy Howard twice, once on a breakaway where his 'nice move' consisted of kicking up his leg.

Denis Savard deked out Glenn Anderson, Mark Messier, Esa Tikkanen, Kevin Lowe and then Grant Fuhr.  At this time those four guys had over a dozen Stanley Cup rings between them while Savard had none.

There was a fifth Oiler on the ice somewhere eating popcorn but wisely decided to avoid being detected by Savard who would have made a special detour just to embarrass that guy as well.  I think it's #19 (Dave Hunter?).
And oh yeah, Savard did this short-handed.

Now that's a goal to remember.

Great Hockey Riots #9

Edmonton Riot of 2006 - the Oilers defeat the Anaheim Ducks in conference final

Unlike #10, the Oilers actually made it out of the first round before things got a bit premature. The riot happened after they won the right to play in the Finals on behalf of the Western Conference, a fact nobody thought would ever happen again until someone invented time travel and went back to the mid-eighties.

In the eighties the Oilers were the class of the league.  Fast, talented and tough they ushered in a new style of play that focused on goal scoring, cheap shots (led by Mark Messier) and getting the puck to Wayne Gretzky.  They played a score now, worry about defense later style of play that made for the most exciting hockey since the movie Slapshot.  

Then The Trade happened.  Oilers owner Peter Pocklington needed money and sold the Oilers and the NHL's biggest asset in Wayne Gretzky to the LA Kings.  Except for one last hurrah towards respectability in 1990, the Oilers quickly sank down to their current level on the cusp of being either an average farm league team or an elite beer league team.
It stayed that way until 2006, the year after the NHL's 2nd work stoppage.  The first year of the owner imposed salary cap system meant that the perpetually poor Oilers were able to acquire the skills of MVP defenceman Chris Pronger and the heart of Mike Peca who at one time was destined to replace Stan Smyl in the Canuck organization, in ogie's perfect world before the Canuck organization messed that up, as per club policy.

Despite the acquisition of some top-rated talent and the continued use of some mid to low rated talent, the Oilers squeaked into the playoffs as the eighth seed in the Western Conference.  From there they would go on to surprise everybody in the hockey universe by beating the league leading Detroit Red Wings, then go on to beat the San Jose Sharks and Anaheim Ducks to meet the Carolina Hurricanes, who surprised everybody because they had no idea a team existed in Carolina.

So, figuring that the Stanley Cup was all but theirs again, they streamed out of the pubs and clubs to party like it was 1985 again.  Some Oiler faithful took advantage of the riot and decided to take matters into their own hands and settle a debt they had with a phone booth on Whyte Avenue:

i have no idea what this phone booth did to deserve such hatred.

Speaking on behalf of the Edmonton tourism board; 

"It's madness, it's just madness," said Steve Parent, 19, on Whyte Avenue. "This is how real Edmontonians party."

As riots go, it was a pretty friendly one; only two people were stabbed, a dozen arrests were made out of an estimated 50,000 people.
The Oilers did manage to win 15 out of 16 games and helped Canada forget all about their hatred towards the NHL owners for the loss of the 2005 season but as riots go, unless you were using a pay phone that night, it was a pretty mild affair.

1. Anatomy of the '82 Canuck Drive

Once Upon A Time in Bizarro World

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.  Although it may seem laughable now but once many, many years ago, the NHL was ruled by two teams for a decade; the New York Islanders and the Edmonton Oilers.  Yes, it's true.  Karma does have a sense of humour. 

During the run and gun eighties, these two teams epitomized that winning the Cup took only determination and a great mixture of skill, toughness and access to cocaine.  The Islanders owned the early eighties, the Oilers the later half.  If you were lucky enough to be alive in the mid-late eighties, you were treated to two Stanley Cup Finals; the Battle of Alberta and then the other one against whatever poor team hobbled out of the Eastern Conference to  lose to either Edmonton or Calgary. 



I said "one of..."

It was different times then.  Vancouver, with their 'Flying V' uniforms were considered one of the ugliest uniforms in North American sports.  Their all-star selection was picked via lottery and their most boisterous fans could afford to pay for tickets and pretty much all rode the bus to the games.
However, right on the cusp of the Oilers transforming the game of hockey into ...this... the 1982 Vancouver Canucks became the Champions of the West; true underdogs that had the unfortunate task to try and beat the last great dynasty; the New York Islanders.  It was Vancouver's first modern-day quest of the Cup and was due to five factors;