While all may appear quiet here with respect to hockey, I've watched every Oilers game this calendar year. I've been getting out a lot of my need for hockey discussion with my wife, who has decided now that the NHL doesn't suck. She'd said about a month ago that she was going to try to watch more games with me, and indeed has. I knew she'd crossed the Rubicon when we were watching a game and she said indignantly, "Hey, wasn't Penner tripped there? Why wasn't that a penalty?" as opposed to simply reacting to my own yelp of annoyance. Also, she now knows the Oilers' voices at least as well as I do (due to an overindulgence in podcast listening and video watching), and knows most of their faces and numbers.
Her Oilers-sweeties are Penner and Moreau, and she thinks Cogliano is "good looking, in a swarthy way." Also, she's just as disgusted as I am with the constant reminders that "Gagner's only 18, he's the youngest player in the NHL!" Another Rubicon: "Doesn't this Hughson guy think that we know that already?"
Yes, another one sucked in to the cult. Now I just need to train her to fetch beer on game days and we'll be all set. Hope she never reads this. If you are, sweetie, just kidding about the beer thing - what would you prefer?
Conversions stories aside, I do have a few "serious-type" things brewing. I have an old half-written post on Penner's picks that's becoming rapidly obsolete. I have some thoughts regarding Pronger's attempted hack job and justice theory (as applied to the NHL), and a few more on Kurtis Foster and no-touch icing.
I've also got a several-years-in-the-making post on what makes a team successful (or not). I keep pulling it out and looking at it, then putting it away and thinking, "I really need to finish that some time, but it's too hard right now." Lately I've been toying with a sort of points system, although how to scale it and what deserves points is the difficult part. For now, go and read Lowetide's Pennants post.
I realized a couple of months ago that I never did finish off my Reasons to Hate series; some of the comments I might have made are long-since obsolete because of league positioning and what have you. Maybe I'll have to get an early start on next season's, maybe I'll finish this one off during the playoffs. Call it typical blawgger lack of follow through. I'd apologize, but it wouldn't be sincere since I do have good reasons, and I'm not that egotistical anyway.
Finally, I'm still fairly sure that the Oilers won't be making the post-season dance, but I'm pretty happy that Burke won't be nearly as smirky as he would have been had Edmonton gone on another apocalyptic slide. Naturally, he'll find a way to be snide about it - jerks and asses always do - but a lot of the sting will be taken out of it, playoffs or no. That's another post idea, along Winterian lines.