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G80 Oilers vs Wild: Don't Blame The Fans |
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Well at least he beat up a goalie.
Milan Lucic has been terrible for a very long time. He’s had 1 goal and 7 assists since Christmas, which is 43 games ago. The frustration was clearly ramping up within him for quite a while and the big man finally went off. As Mike Smith hacked at his legs and jabbed him with the blocker, something in Lucic snapped. He lost it and fed the Flames goaltender three uncontested left hands in a row.
Yes, Mike Smith deserved it. No, it’s still probably not a great idea for anyone to do.
The Hockey code all but made it a certainty that someone on the Flames would have to step up and get punched in the face by Lucic because their goalie pretended to be Hextal in the crease. Tanner Glass was that man and was thoroughly beaten because of it. I think Lucic let him off the hook after a couple big blows landed. They both knew Glass didn’t stand a chance. It was the first fight Lucic had been in since November.
When it comes to Milan Lucic’s effectiveness on the ice, I think he has the tools to still impact a game. It’s just that it’s difficult to do as he’s a half-step behind the play and his ability to make and take passes is limited. However, when his feet are moving and he’s throwing his weight he can be a very intimidating player. As true as it is that Lucic has been useless post-Christmas, before then he was Edmonton’s 4th leading scorer with 26 points in 36 games. Surely he fits somewhere between the 13% shooting he was doing in the first half of the season and the 1.3% shooting in the second half.
That said, I have an issue with comments like this:
Yes, the media covering the Oilers has always had a fetish for large burly men. I’m not here to judge their preferences there, but as hockey players go, they have also consistently derided and challenged the value of anyone who has not fit in their pre-conceived notion of what a hockey player looks like. Hemsky didn’t practice hard enough. Petry was soft. Nuge is a bad centerman because his faceoff are weak. Hall is a bad teammate. Meanwhile, guys like Russell, Caggiula, Ference, and Moreau are praised for their grittiness and attitude even though they can’t play.
There’s a reason Edmonton’s blogging community was so big so early despite the fact that the city is a relatively small northern outpost – it was necessary to have new voices. The necessity to have more than mindless water carriers writing about the Oilers has been the driving force of Oiler blogs for over a decade now.
Yeah, the media – and by extension some brainwashed fans – has been pushing the idea that the Oilers were getting pushed around because they lacked physical size and not because the team employed so many bad players. It was dumb then and it is dumb now. The NHL didn’t change overnight to not need size. The league has always rewarded talent, whether it was big or small. Most Cup winning teams are basically “average” in size but they have great goaltending and the ability to score.
Toughness has been and always will be secondary or maybe even tertiary to the need for actual NHL talent. That’s why smart people have been screaming about the Reinhart, Hall, and Eberle trades since they occurred. Downgrading talent and assets has never been the path to victory.
Blaming the fans for agreeing with a move made by their favorite team is asinine. By definition, most fans are so biased that they are incapable or unwilling to acknowledge when their team makes a mistake. Don’t believe me, check out the polls done by David Staples at the time of the Hall trade that shows Oiler fans believed they had won the trade. We spent all last year with the likes of Mark Spector gloating that the team had won because the team was winning. Now a few months later that trade is laughable even to him.
You could raise ticket prices 20% and STILL find Oiler fans who think it’s a good move just because the Oilers did it.
My concern is that the media in Edmonton has all the access and has done nothing with it except insulate the team from dissenting views. That Henderson guy has been railing against Russell’s effectiveness, let’s joke with McLellan about it and write a song on the radio. Trade Hall for a middle pairing defender? Let’s put a few daggers into Hall’s back on the way out (including a now debunked lie about him going to rehab) then boast about winning the deal for a year despite all the evidence against it. This is a “Yes, sir” culture that has tip-toed around forcing anyone in the organization even consider that they’ve made mistakes.
The media was on-board with downgrading talent for the sake of getting bigger? No kidding. With toothless dinosaurs and feckless understudies still holding all the media jobs in town we might have to wait another generation before someone with some integrity and critical thinking skills manages to break this culture of ineptitude.
LINEUP
RNH appears to be out again
Draisaitl McDavid Rattie
Caggiula Cammalleri Aberg
Lucic Strome Puljujarvi
Slepyshev Khaira Kassian
Nurse Larsson
Russell Sekera
Auvitu Bear
Talbot
OILERS KEYS TO THE GAME
1) No Suter. The Oilers are in some luck tonight because Ryan Suter is out of the lineup. The Wild defender’s ankle looked like it was turned to jelly in an awkward collision and the Wild are making him undergo all kinds of tests. Prognosis: Not good for Minnesota. Suter is their highest scoring defender with 6-45-51 this season and he’s also a workhorse who averages 26:46 a night for the team. He plays almost half the games, which will make for an interesting adjustment to the rest of the defense. The slack will be made up from Dumba and Brodin. Winnipeg will be watching intently as they prepare for a 1st round matchup.
2) Talbot Bounce Back? Cam Talbot needs to finish this week out with a little bit of dignity if the Oilers want to end on a high note. The embattled Oiler goaltender is having a terrible season and he’s been poor in 2 of his last 3 starts. He didn’t last the 1st period against the Flames and the final goal he allowed proved to be the winner. His .906 save percentage is one of the biggest reasons the Oilers aren’t close to contention. You can’t win when you’re allowing 3 goals a night and that’s what he averages. He just needs to be reliable again.
3) 3rd Line Blues. The trio of Lucic-Strome-Puljujarvi is not performing well in the offensive zone. Shocker. We know Lucic’s problems, but he hasn’t had a point in 5 games. Ryan Strome hasn’t had a point in 6 games. Jesse Puljujarvi hasn’t had a point in 6 games either. When one looks good (even without scoring) the others do not. That goes for Lucic the same way it goes for Strome and Puljujarvi. Personally, I’m not a fan at all of keeping JP on the 3rd line when he could be playing with better players. However, the other side of that argument is that he needs to be producing on the 3rd before he can go up higher. Everybody on that line needs to do better.
Puck drops tonight at 6PM Mountain Time on Sportsnet West. Game On!
Follow me on Twitter @Archaeologuy
Edmonton Oilers Blogger • 
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