I was going to post something tonight, but I've had half a bottle of rum so I accidentally clicked on a link off-site in the midst of my post. Realising my mistake, I went back, but this software erases the contents of the text box and puts in a little box saying "You seem to have accidentally left this page! Perhaps you'd like to restore to a moment, like, twenty minutes ago?"

I want somebody to hit me until I promise to write my posts in Notepad first. 

Are you a fan of the South Smythian Rolo-Gator but don't appreciate checking in every now and then to see if I've made my quarterly post yet? Well, then, I have just the thing for you. It's located on the bottom of the right-hand bar, and it's a little section marked "Syndicate".

For those not familiar, you can select one of the RSS feeds and load it into one of a variety of programs called RSS readers (if you use Opera as a web browser, it includes an RSS reader). Then, when the South Smythian Rolo-Gator updates, you automatically receive the full text of the post delivered right to you. No need to even visit the website unless you want to make a comment.

I know lots of you know about this already. But I also know that lots of you don't, and I wanted to nail you with the 411.

Sam Gagner has the potential to be the best post-dynasty player the Oilers have drafted. He has the best head for the game that I've seen recently on a player his age at his position. He is an absolutely sublime playmaker and I can't help but feel a little thrill of excitement run up my spine when I think about where he could be in five years' time.

But next year?

Lately, us Oilerphiles have been scanning the Oilers' roster and trying to figure out what the players are going to achieve in 2008-09. And one name that always leaps out is that of Gagner: PunjabiOil has him on 70 points and 20 goals. The normally-conservative Copper & Blue has him at "60+ points", and a quick browse of the message boards has predictions starting around 65 points and heading a long way up. This is why I don't recommend quick browses of the message boards.

Gagner has three big positives in his corner. First, he's still going to be one of the seven to ten youngest players in the NHL on opening day of 2008-09. Second, he was a non-entity on the powerplay last season with only four points. Third, there are no suspicious numbers on his sheet: 15:40 a night and a 9.6% shooting percentage are pretty fair and it looks like Gagner will be able to keep them up. His total of second assists is nothing overly worrying either, and "sick shootout goals" aren't counted on the stats sheet and aren't foremost in fans' minds anyway.

Of course, I'm not a big numbers guy. And just because Gagner's numbers are pointing the way doesn't mean he gets a pass.

His biggest long-term strength - youth - doubles as his biggest short-term weakness. The guy is an underdeveloped boy playing against men on average one and a half times his age. Last year, he went out against his fellow kids and midgets, scored a lot, and got scored on even more. The Oilers got away with that because they had Horcoff, Hemsky, Penner, Stoll, Torres, et al eating up the tough minutes, and late in the season the emergence of the fourth line allowed MacTavish to respond to players too tough for Gagner appropriately.

This year, Stoll and Torres are gone. I think that adding Lubomir Visnovsky was massive, but for all Stoll's offensive anaemia he did things for the Oilers that nobody else could do, and he has no logical successor in the top fourteen forwards. Erik Cole is a hell of a player, but he's a winger. There's been talk of Penner going down the centre but this is based off a good faceoff percentage in a small sample size and ignores the fact that at centre he's too goddamned slow to play with anybody. If you think Kyle Brodziak, Marc Pouliot, or (God forbid) Rob Schremp are going to be able to take up much of the load, you're far more optimistic than I am. Brodziak, in particular, has had a lot of hype but has (to this reporter) proven even less than Gagner has. MacTavish will obviously try something like Cole - Brodziak - Pisani at first, but I don't think they're going to prove up to the job, the blender is going to start whirring, and Gagner will be out against the team's second-best. And there will be pain, both metaphorical as Gagner struggles and literal as Gagner has to face the Mike Griers and Todd Bertuzzis of the world trying to put him into the second row.

Second, yes, there are spots to be had on the powerplay. But Gagner's not going to get them. Visnovsky is Stoll's obvious replacement as a pointman with, say, Penner taking faceoffs and then going to the wing. The other departed players had very little in the way of powerplay time, and Gagner will be once again reduced to grabbing mediocre second-unit time and nibbling on scraps.

Third, while Gagner's numbers aren't due for a regression, some of his probable linemates very much are. Others have gone over Andrew Cogliano's near-certain offensive regression with far more skill than I ever could, so I shall merely observe that it's going to happen, and if Andrew Cogliano isn't burying as many chances then Sam Gagner isn't getting as many assists. Bobby Nilsson, meanwhile, is another playmaker and if Cogliano isn't serving as an effective triggerman, then at this stage of their career neither he nor Gagner can be expected to put more than, say, thirty goals away combined.

Indeed, a lack of scoring touch is going to plague the Oilers below the first line next year. Horcoff, Cogliano, Gilbert, and Pisani are due to take steps backwards in shooting percentage (Gilbert's not getting enough play here: 13.3% for a rookie defenseman is beyond obscene). Gagner can pass as often as he wants but if nobody's putting them away, it's not going to help. Sam Gagner simply isn't at the level yet where he can bank pucks off of Blair Macdonald's head for 78 games and get him 40 goals.

In his own preview of Gagner's coming season, Lowetide had the superb youngster for 53 points next year, and I think that's pretty near the mark. Forget 70 points; it's quite possible that Gagner's counting numbers will go backwards in 2008-09: not because he's less than an exceptional hockey player, but because the circumstances don't seem set to allow him anything more. Now, bear in mind that I was predicting all through the beginning of last season that Gagner wasn't going to make the team and that even if he did he'd be back in London after ten games. But still.

Maybe I'm just trying to put another reverse hex on him. Best of luck to the Calgary Flames this playoff season. 

(Note: While researching this piece, I decided to hit up the NHL's stats page. On a whim, I tried http://stats.nhl.com and promptly ran into a login prompt. Suspicious, eh?)

So. The Oilers sacked Kevin Lowe today.

Well, they bumped him upstairs to "President of Hockey Operations for Rexall Sports". Yes, Lowe's still in the organisation. Yes, Lowe was careful to emphasise that he was still in charge, dammit, and that new ashen-faced supremo Steve Tambellini answers to him.

But look at it this way. Who would you say ran the Edmonton Oilers on the ice last year: Lowe or Pat Laforge? Laforge could have fired Lowe at his leisure, but there's no doubt it was Lowe's team. Regardless of titles, the guy whose fingerprints are going to be all over the team is the guy who has the most direct contact with the roster. That's going to be Steve Tambellini, and even if Kevin Lowe has to sign the forms on all the Pronger-for-Smid-and-Lupul trades, it's Tambellini who's going to be getting the names together.

And just what the hell are we getting? Bob McCown mentioned that Steve Tambellini has been "the next general manager of fill-in-the-blank" for seventeen years. He's spent almost two decades as a part of an organisation that has been, for the most part, miserable. There were two great Stanley Cup Finals runs and a lot of crap. Which parts were Tambellini involved in? One has to answer "both" and the crap far outweighs the good in Vancouver.

Tambellini wanted to stay in Canada? Fine, but in the last couple years there have been GM openings in Ottawa, Toronto, and Vancouver itself. Those went to the coach, nobody yet, and a freakin' agent. Tambellini was considered a suboptimal candidate in his own hometown to somebody with no management experience.

I'm generally in favour of keeping general managers when they're not being egregiously useless, for the simple reason of the numbers. There are a lot of Mike Milbury/Mike Keenan mold who will steer your team into a rock, a bunch of guys who can tread water, a few (like Kevin Lowe) for whom the good are generally equal to or slightly outweigh the bad, and a very few Lou Lamouriello types who are consistently the best managers in the league.

The odds do not favour Steve Tambellini. 

Pick #193: D Jordan Bendfeld (Medicine Hat, WHL) [72.6+19=25 160]

See those boxcar numbers I just posted for Jordan Bendfeld? Yeah, ignore them. Pretend they're not there. Bendfeld is a 20-year-old who reentered the draft after failing to agree to terms with the Phoenix Coyotes (#152 overall in 2006) as well as an enforcer who plays defense, so goals, assists, and points are even less relevant than they usually are. I might as well list his shoe size, eye colour, and favourite episode of The Littlest Hobo while I'm at it.

Jordan Bendfeld has a simple job: make people hurt. At 6'2" and 216 lbs, he's big but not unusually so. His advantages come in his mentality (he's one of those never-say-die guys who fans of every hockey team have loved since the beginning of time) and in his pugilistic prowess. He's no Derek Boogaard but he's always been able to look after himself, and his fight card at hockeyfights.com is a fairly healthy one. At twenty years old, he's also unique in this draft class in that he's likely going to make an immediate impact in the professional ranks, be it in Stockton or Springfield. The Coyotes didn't want him, but the Coyotes aren't known for their prowess in player decisions.

As for his other hockey skills, they are nothing to write home about. He's a respectable defensive player but that's all, and his offense is at a level which is likely to disappear entirely when he's playing against men rather than boys. At the very least, he's following the curve: as you'd expect for a player of his age, Bendfeld was one of Medicine Hat's best defensemen and has managed to consistently rise on the depth chart of a very good WHL team.

Bendfeld's obviously extremely unlikely to make the NHL in any regular role, but that's typical for a seventh-round pick. His skill set, however, is one that's always in demand, and guys like this always have a career someplace. He might never leave the United Hockey League, but the guy's going to play somewhere. Mark my words.

Missed Opportunities: Patrick Johnson (#206 to Montreal) is a pretty good young player who put up 21 points as a true freshman with Kyle Turris and the University of Wisconsin. Numbers like that in your first year in the NCAA are pretty healthy, and even though size is a real issue he might have been worth a flier. Samuel Morneau (#195 to Carolina) scored twenty goals with Baie-Comeau in the Quebec league, and while that's not exactly Mario Lemieux-level production it's enough to suggest that he knows how to do something. But it's hard to say either of these guys are better than Bendfeld.

The Verdict: I think Bendfeld was the best player available at 193rd overall, for what little that's worth, and therefore I applaud this pick by Lowe. At the very least, the guy's got the ability to play a role for the Oilers in minor pro, and there's at least a chance that he'd be capable of a bit more someday.

Pick #163: C Teemu Hartikainen (KalPa, Finnish Jr. A) [37.10+7=17 24]

No picture available for Teemu Hartikainen; well, I found one picture but Lowetide had already snagged it and part of the reason I waited this long to write my draft review was just to make sure LT and I didn't use the same pictures again this year. So one picture available for Teemu Hartikainen.

This is what we in the blogging trade call "a bad sign".

Seriously. The only thing worse than grainy camera-phone footage of some indistinct blob playing against other indistinct blobs is not having any grainy camera-phone footage. It's eerie. What we know about Teemu Hartikainen as a hockey player can be summed up in a paragraph. Bit slow, pretty strong, couldn't break half a point per game in Finnish junior last year so presumably he's not exactly going to shoot the lights out.

Also, he's Finnish. Oiler fans like Finns. That's about the best thing we can say about him right now.

I can't truthfully say he's a bad pick. I suspect he is because the guy hasn't found a ride in any of Finland's thousand or so senior leagues and he can't score worth a billionth of a crap. But, as we all know, just staring at the boxcar numbers doesn't tell us beans. For all I know he's Jari Kurri. Lowetide likes him enough to call him "the third-most valuable player taken by the Oilers this weekend", which when you take five guys and one of them is Philippe Cornet isn't exactly thundering praise. But still.

Missed Opportunities: I'd sure like the Oilers to have taken Belleville goaltender Mike Murphy (#165 to Carolina) at this spot. Murphy's posted save percentages of .900 and .929 in his last two seasons and, while he was playing for a good team, .929 isn't chicken feed with anybody. Jeff Foss (#166 to Nashville) is another interesting choice: he played for Rensellaer Polytechnic last year and turns twenty in December, but he's a gritty defensive defenseman and might have been worth taking a flyer on.

Dodged Bullets: Is it possible to dodge a bullet in the sixth round? I mean, even if you drafted me, you'd only be wasting a sixth-round pick. Probably not. I hereby retire this segment for the year.

Final Verdict: I'm always leery about Mystery Euros, just because, well, they're Mystery Euros and we don't know crap about them. I think it's safe to say that the Oilers missed a big opportunity to get a goalie with a bit of potential in Mike Murphy, though, and there were a few other interesting players further down in the order. I think Lowe missed this one, unless Hartikainen turns out to be good and he didn't.

Pick #133: LW Philippe Cornet (Rimouski, QMJHL) [61.23+26=49 24] 

When the Oilers snagged Philippe Cornet with their fifth-round pick in this year's draft, the reaction at my desk went something like this.

"Who?"

(sounds of frantic clicking and flipping)

"Him?"

I genuinely hadn't even heard of Philippe Cornet until I saw his name sprawled across TSN.ca like so much manure on Paul McCallum's lawn. When I glanced at his statistics, my mood did not improve. Second-leading scorer on a crummy team (way behind Panthers prospect Michael Frolik). Not a lot of speed, not a lot of intensity, no ability whatsoever to win the battles, defensive ability suspect, consistency suspect, and generally arrows pointing the wrong way across the board.

In later rounds, my philosophy is to draft players who can do something and do it well. Vyacheslav Trukhno possessed an NHL-calibre shot when he was drafted, and no matter what happened he'd still have that NHL-calibre shot to fall back on. So when he went to Springfield and struggled at first, you knew that they'd go in eventually, and they did. Kyle Brodziak and Fernando Pisani were both late picks who got to the NHL because they were great defensive forwards when they were drafted and were able to rely on that long enough to get a meal ticket and develop the rest of their game. You look at guys like Ales Pisa and Jan Hejda: they were able to play a calm game and limit mistakes, and this made their careers even when their other skills weren't always top-end.

As far as I can tell, Cornet hasn't got those "plus skills" that we talk about when we're trying to sum up a prospect. It can't fairly be said that he's bad at everything, but his greatest weakness is that he has no particular strengths. So when a guy like, say, Brent Regner (#137 to Columbus) goes in the fifth round, you say "skilled, undersized playmaking defenseman, needs to work on defensive positioning". You see Philippe Cornet, and he needs to work on everything. Not a good sign.

Missed Opportunities: There aren't a lot of brilliant players at this stage of the draft, but Lowe really could have done better. The aforementioned Regner is the sort of player who can surprise a few guys and have a career somewhere: he certainly has the skill for it. If only he'd dropped a few picks, Prabh Rai (#131 to Vancouver) is a skilled young offensive playmaker who could have been a real steal. And as for players we actually could have gotten, Matt Martin (#148 to the New York Islanders) is a solid, irritating winger with some hops and the ability to have the career Dan Baum should have had. And throughout the next few picks, there's a number of players who are on the same level as Cornet or maybe just a bit better.

Dodged Bullets: Then again, it sure could have been worse. Whatever the New Jersey Devils were smoking when they drafted Kory Nagy at #142 out of Oshawa, I want a supplier. Not a very good defensive player and a very, very bad offensive player who couldn't score on the Shooter Tutor, never mind an NHL goaltender. Meanwhile, goaltender Alexander Pechurski #150 to Pittsburgh) is a questionable pick: you're going to take a semi-regular goaltender with no serious experience out of the Russian third division, Pittsburgh? Really? You sure about that? Besides, if we're honest, I bet he would have fallen another round, guys. I mean, not like there was a run on mediocre goaltenders who might as well have been playing road hockey.

Final Verdict: Lowe's first real miss of the draft is lucky not a serious one, since it was only the fifth round. Still, if Cornet shows up in the NHL I'll print off this blog post and eat it. These guys simply don't make it, and if they're not going to make it what's the point of drafting them?

The Dustin Penner offer sheet drained the Oilers of their own first-round pick, their second-round pick, and their third-round pick this year. As a result, after the Eberle selection the Oilers got to sit around and presumably play some cards while Lowe tried to convince Prendergast that they were going to draft a Latvian player named Seymour Butz. I mean, I'm sure they made some calls around about lining a trade up, but they sure didn't pull the trigger on anything.

Thus, the Oilers waited eighty-one selections until their next turn came up. When that turn arrived, they did what they like to do lately and grabbed a defenseman.

Pick #103: D Johan Motin (Bofors, Swedish Allsvenskan) [15.2+3=5 18]

Motin participated in the World U-18 Championships as part of Team Sweden, and it's from there that we get the bulk of our information on this 6'1" 202-pound pile of Swedish reasonableness. He's a guy who plays a simple, no-frills style of hockey. Not a lot of offensive ability but he's got his head screwed on the right way, looks after his own zone, doesn't make a lot of mistakes, and won't kill you if he's stranded on the ice against Koivu, Kovalev, and Tanguay.

There's a bunch of players like this kicking around. Steve Staios is basically a high-end version of Johan Motin. Bryan Young has so much in common with Motin that they should be roommates. Your Cory Crosss, your Igor Ulanovs, your Steve Montadors, your Stephane Robidass. They all differ in style and skillset, but they all come close to capturing the spirit of drafting a guy like Johan Motin.

When you talk about a guy like Motin, you always say things like "he'll probably play in the NHL someday". He probably will. He'll come up for five games during an injury, he'll do okay, maybe he'll get an assist, he'll be something like -1. You'll say "gee, he wasn't bad". He'll go back to the AHL, he'll do absolutely nothing to stand out, three years later he'll be somewhere in Europe and you'll read a "where is he now?" column on him in an Edmonton newspaper.

I like this pick because everybody needs a couple guys like Motin kicking around in their system. He's an insurance policy. When a couple defensemen go down you're not going to have to kick yourself finding a trade partner or drag Igor Ulanov out of the glue factory just because you need a warm body. In the later rounds, you can either grab a guy like Motin or look for the next Daniel Alfredsson. The latter approach gets you one star and ninety-nine wastes of a draft pick. The former approach gets you somebody you can probably use. Briefly. Which approach is better? Well, I feel a bit better about the Oilers knowing that in three years Motin will be on the farm.

Missed Opportunities: the Oilers could have had Jordon Southorn (#104 to Buffalo) out of the PEI Rocket. Southorn's a nicely-sized offensive defenseman who can take care of business in his own end, and while not as safe as Motin he might have been a better return on an investment. Goaltender Harri Sateri (#106 to San Jose) has an absolutely mindblowing goalie name and at least a little playing ability, although he's spent all but three games of his career in Finnish junior. And Kingston's Nathan Moon (#120 to Pittsburgh) is an undersized but effective offensive player who put up pretty good numbers and was the leading scorer on a mediocre team while playing an effectively pestering style of hockey. I think I'd rather have Southorn or Moon than Motin, but I'm not unhappy about the pick.

Dodged Bullets: Ryan Hegarty (#113 to Anaheim) and Sean Lorenz (#115 to Minnesota) were United States National Team Development Program defensemen who went rapidly in the fourth round. Neither of them have inspiring statistics, abilities, or physical characteristics, and the results for guys out of the NTDP are always skewed by their unspeakably bizarre playing arrangement. The odds on either of them making it to the show are seriously slim. A.J. Jenks (#100 to Florida) is a rather chunky Plymouth Whaler forward with size but not a lot else going for him, and I'm terrified the Oilers might have grabbed him just out of some deepseated need to draft a Coke Machine. Thanks, Florida.

Final Verdict: Lowe could have done better here, but he could have done a hell of a lot worse, he grabbed a real player, and in the fourth round I can't crucify him for not grabbing the guy I wanted. There was room for improvement, but he did pass. 

So it's almost been a calendar year since I last posted to the South Smythian Rolo-Gator. Well, what of it? It's never too late to put something up there, and the draft is the perfect time on so many levels.

Frankly, I love the draft. Aside from the deadline or any Stanley Cup finals with the Oilers in it, it is about my favourite time of the hockey season. The worst teams get the most hope. Middling sides like the Oilers trek into a land where they're more likely to draft a bust than not, and the results can be spectacular. Who can forget Michel Riesen, Steve Kelly, Jesse Niinimaki, Michael Henrich, Mathieu Descoteaux... ah, the traditions of the Edmonton Oilers are truly rich and beautiful.

Fortunately, I think the Oilers did a bit better this year.

Pick #22: RW Jordan Eberle (Regina, WHL) [70.42+33=75 20]

If this was the only pick the Oilers made all year, it would have been enough to get my motor running. My personal prediction was that the Oilers would go with One-Bite Brownie-sized defenseman Erik Karlsson of Frolunda Goteburg's junior team, but he was off the board at 18 to the Ottawa Senators. Moreover, I honestly thought that Eberle would be gone by then: guys who can put home forty goals in a highly defensive league on a team without much scoring punch while playing with a bunch of doorknobs are usually well in demand.

The fact that Eberle fell as far as he did has to be considered a miracle. Only Steve Stamkos, Drew Doughty, Kyle Beach, and Mikkel Boedker are clearly more talented than Eberle in this draft, with a bunch of guys including Alex Pietrangelo, Zach Bogosian, and Luke Schenn joining Eberle in the second tier of the draft class. Eberle's going to be ahead of some of those guys and behind some others. But I'd rather have Eberle than Cody Hodgson ten times out of ten, for example. Joshua Bailey, Nikita Filatov, and Zach Boychuk are all guys who I'd prefer to Eberle if I was running an NHL team, and depending on what side of the bed I woke up on I might take Eberle over defensemen like Pietrangelo, Tyler Myers, and Colton Teubert.

You get the point. I'm big on Eberle. His numbers, in the context of the WHL, were superb: the entire league boasted only six 40-goal scorers. Nobody scored fifty, only three men beat Eberle's 42 and only Tyler Ennis (#26 to Buffalo) was also draft-eligible. And Ennis is fully seven months older than Eberle while playing on a vastly superior Red Deer Rebels team.

Once you take into account the sinkhole that was the Regina Pats top-line offense, things just look better for Eberle. Eberle was the only Pat to beat seventy points and the only Pat to beat sixty points. The team's next-leading scorer turned 21 in February and scored only fifteen goals himself, his offense mostly based on setting up Eberle. The team's third-leading scorer was a defenseman, and Eberle's usual left wing was fourth, who posted a decidedly second-tier line of 18 goals and 33 assists in 72 games. Eberle had more than twice the number of goals of the team's next-leading goalscorer, superb young defenseman Logan Pyett. Pyett and Eberle were the only Pats to break twenty goals; Eberle's linemates were the only others to hit fifteen.

Wait, it gets better. Eberle was the third-youngest regular player on his team behind winger Garrett Mitchell and defender Alex Pym, and neither of them contributed nearly at Eberle's level. Only Bogosian, Filatov (by ten days), Karlsson (by sixteen days), Jake Gardiner, and Michael Del Zotto were drafted before Eberle and were younger than him.

So Eberle is young, skilled, and can score in spite of having fire hydrants for linemates. His defensive skills are subpar, but the man's not Joffrey Lupul. As Lowetide pointed out in his own look at Eberle, Desjardins gives him a 15+11=26, which is just stupid good for a guy selected twenty-second overall. 

So, why did he fall as far as he did?

First off, the man didn't have pedigree. What's pedigree? Pedigree is what got Angelo Esposito selected in the first round last year even though he was the most disappointing player in the Quebec league during his draft year and had posted only a single decent season while playing with much better players. Pedigree is why everybody's talking about John Tavares as the next superstar in spite of a 16-point regression in his last junior season and no signs of the least amount of progress for the last eighteen months. Pedigree is why Toronto Maple Leaf fans are crapping themselves over Luke Schenn, a mediocre defensive player with the NHL offense of Cory Cross.

Pedigree is what you get from being on SportsCentre. Some media hack sees you good and writes a glowing article about you. Some other media hack reads that article and writes one of his own, everybody trying to be the man who discovers the Next One. Before you know it, TSN is running profiles on you and Sportsnet sends guys to your games. The essential problem is that junior hockey in this country is popular, but it's not part of the world of your average Saturday night hockey fan. They just don't watch the game, so when they're feeded spoonfuls of hope by a media hack mailing in an article, they start saying things like "the Oilers are going to regret not drafting Esposito!" even though their knowledge of him comes from, at most, a YouTube highlight video.

Unfortunately, media hacks don't go west a lot, and those who go west stay in Vancouver and sometimes Calgary. You better believe that they don't get out to Regina or Prince Albert or Brandon or even Kamloops. Even the good guys, like Stephen Brunt and James Mirtle, are predominantly based in the east. It's a big nation and if you're lazy you're not going to make the effort to find the next great player out in farm country. A few guys, like the aforementioned Schenn, show up at a road game and draw some eyeballs. But if you're Jordan Eberle and playing your brains out on a mediocre team in Regina, the odds are against you.

GMs are only human, after all. When Phoenix drafted Blake Wheeler early in 2006, the media crucified them simply because they hadn't seen him play. When Edmonton grabbed Jesse Niinimaki, people were alarmed that there weren't any highlight videos hanging around. Granted, they were right about Niinimaki, but still. Michael Henrich got huge press in his draft year and he didn't turn out a lot better.

In the Internet age, thank god, things are getting better. If you were at Lowetide on draft day - and if not, why weren't you? - reaction to Eberle was almost overwhelmingly positive, thanks to the fact that more and more hockey fans are able to do the research, watch the games for themselves, and realise "hey, this Eberle guy looks pretty good". People aren't stupid, but they're not able to hop on a bus to Regina with a thermos of coffee and watch guys play. The Internet doesn't just make things easier for Joe Fan, it makes things possible.

Not that I expect Eberle to get a free pass.

I like the guy.

Missed Opportunities: Eberle was the best player available, but there were still some nice prospects on the board. Viktor Tikhonov (#28 to Phoenix) has Mystery Euro value and put up respectable numbers in limited ice time in the third-best league in world. Rumour was that the Oilers wanted a goalie, and Jakob Markstrom (#31 to Florida) could be a pretty good one. Finally, Nicolas Deschamps (#35 to Anaheim) was far behind Eberle in offense but had a more limited role with Chicoutimi behind established QMJHLer Francis Pare and is a superior player in his own zone. But it bears repeating that Eberle was pretty clearly the best player on the board and had been some time.

Dodged Bullets: If the Oilers were going to draft a goalie, that goalie would have been Chet Pickard out of the Tri-City Americans (#18 to Nashville). And thank god they didn't, for Pickard is far from an elite goaltender and could have been a legendary miss if Eberle does what he's capable of doing. Taking the aforementioned Erik Karlsson (#15 to Ottawa) would have been in keeping with recent history for the Oilers, and Karlsson isn't a bad player, but neither is he a gamebreaker and at 5'11" he's always going to be a chaos defender in the NHL. Meanwhile, Tyler Cuma (#23 to Minnesota) must have been tempting for the Oilers, but Cuma is a "safe" defensive defenseman: when you can get a gamebreaker late in the first round, you've got to do it.

Final Verdict: any time you get the best player available, you've done a good day's work. Jordan Eberle gets my seal of approval, which unfortunately means he's certain to be a god-awful bust. 

For obvious reasons, Mathieu Garon has been getting a lot of press lately. Most of this press has, obviously, centred around his last four fantastic games and the goaltending controversy that is now officially on, with Dwayne Roloson as the steady, reliable, long-time incumbent and Garon as the guy who came outta nowhere to challenge for a starting job on one of the worst teams in the National Hockey League. The veteran vs. the nobody, perhaps the quinessential goaltending controversy story.

Now, of course, the Oilers have had pretty good luck with career backup goaltenders, and Roloson's been very good to us over his first two seasons in Oiltown (hey, remember how K-Lowe got utterly slagged for that trade by the peanut gallery? How's that going?). But, much like our previous career backup, when you look at his history you see that Garon hasn't exactly come out of nowhere. This is guy who turns 30 in January and has been on the radar for a long time. He ain't Tim Thomas, and his NHL career has actually been more successful than Roloson's was at the same point.

Let's consider Garon year by year.

1995-98 (17 - 20 years old): spent his junior seasons with the Victoriaville Tigres of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League. The QMJHL has never flattered goalie stats, but his rookie campaign was pretty ugly on a team whose stars were Daniel Corso and P.J. Stock. Hearing your team is relying heavily on Daniel Corso and P.J. Stock is probably a death knell for even an LNAH team. Luckily, Garon improved in his final two seasons, although he and Corso were the only two players with any NHL games to emerge from those last two teams.

1998-2000 (20 - 22 years old): AHL player with the now-defunct Fredericton Canadiens and the also-now-defunct Quebec Citadelles (yes, he's been around long enough to play for two defunct AHL teams, although in the late 90s and early 2000s the Habs changed minor-league affiliations more often than most people changed socks). Interestingly, his teammate in his rookie AHL season was a young goaltender by the name of Jose Theodore, who was just on the fringe of breaking into the NHL and thus played only 27 American league games to Garon's 40. The 1998-1999 AHL Canadiens boasted future NHLers Francis Bouillon and Stephane Robidas, as well as a couple blueliners like Miloslav Guren and Alain Nasreddine who've had long, solid careers in various high professional leagues. Thus, Garon experienced two things that would sadly not become a trend for him: playing behind a solid defense, and playing more than Jose Theodore.

The 1999-2000 Citadelles discarded Bouillon (to the NHL) and eventually Nasreddine (to the Hamilton Bulldogs) in favour of gems like Mike McBain (probably the worst former NHL player I've ever seen live) and Mathieu Descoteaux (Oiler fans need no introduction to him). I count three guys on that AHL team (Garon, Robidas, and Jason Ward) who ever became anything like an NHL regular, and frankly, that's not a lot. Ward in particular is a member of the Too-Good-To-Waive-But-Not-Good-Enough-To-Play All-Stars. Perhaps understandably, Garon's numbers declined that season.

2000 - 2003 (22 - 25 years old): the pinball years, where Garon ricocheted between the Canadiens and the Citadelles-cum-Bulldogs. The Habs loved to do this with their goalies in the post-Patrick Roy era, because if there's one thing they learned from that debacle, it's that treating goalies weirdly until they go insane is fun and profitable. Garon's first year in the NHL wasn't a bad one: eleven games spent on a netminding crew that consisted of Jose Theodore and the Three Backups (Jeff Hackett was still around! And he sucked! Woo!), a quite respectable .897 save percentage on a lousy team, and even a couple of shutouts. This was the year that Oleg Petrov tied for the team lead in scoring, to give you some idea of how brutal those Canadiens were.

Those three seasons were essentially the same. He rocked the house in the American league (save percentages of .920, .918, and a a video game-like .937) and was good, but uninteresting, in limited NHL action. In 2002-03, Garon posted a .940 save percentage with a couple shutouts in the NHL, but that was only in eight games, and two good blank sheets would have dragged that percentage up significantly. By most metrics, Jose Theodore was a significantly worse goaltender that year than either Garon or Jeff Hackett (who was still around, and still sucked), but Theodore still got the at-bats with Garon and Hackett reduced to pinch-hitting.

On a side note, 2002-03 was the year of that embarrassingly good shared Oilers-Canadiens Hamilton team that won the Calder Cup. Garon's video-game numbers, combined with his NHL duties, actually only let him finish third among Hamilton goalies in games played, behind illustrious NHLers Ty Conklin and Eric Fichaud. That team ran out Jason Ward, Michael Ryder, Jarret Stoll, Tomas Plekanec, Marc-Andre Bergeron, Marcel Hossa, Fernando Pisani, Mike Komisarek, Ron Hainsey, Francis Bouillon, Raffi Torres, Alexei Semenov, and Marty Reasoner, all of whom are currently on NHL rosters. That is unreal. No wonder Garon's stats were good.

2003-04 (25 - 26 years old): Garon's first full NHL season. Well, if you can call eighteen games a full NHL season, which I'm not convinced you can. Tragically for Mathieu, his old friend Theodore was in the middle of one of his Good Years, throwing up a 2.27 goals-against average to go with a .919 save percentage and six shutouts. Considering his limited ice-time Garon's counting numbers were as good or better than Theodore's, but since Garon likely got the easier matchups not too much should be read into the slight difference. Theodore deserved to start 67 games that year, without question. What he didn't deserve was to go unchallenged, and Garon certainly deserved better than having the Habs brass say "hey, let's trade our bright young backup goaltender who can push our notoriously inconsistent starter for a French guy and Radek Fucking Bonk!"

2004-05 (26 - 27 years old): Garon played on a pretty good team that year. Unfortunately, that pretty good team was the Manchester Monarchs. Mike Cammalleri, Dustin Brown, and George Parros were NHL names up front, while the brilliant Tim Gleason and a solid kid by the name of Denis Grebeshkov patrolled the blueline. It was a situation in which it would be hard for Garon to fail, and he didn't: a .927 save percentage with eight shutouts. Backup goalie and former Oilers draft pick Adam Hauser was, if anything, a little better, but that could be attributed to good matchups and familiarity with the Kings/Monarchs system in the beginning of the year.

2005-07 (27 - 29 years old): a Los Angeles King. Garon went from the starter of the Monarchs straight to his first NHL starting gig in 2005-06, on a team which boasted Pavol Demitra getting hurt, Mike Cammalleri and Alexander Frolov being young, Craig Conroy and Luc Robitaille being old and useless, and defenseman Lubomir Visnovsky being the leading scorer with all the backchecking intensity of Jason Arnott one of those days where he just wasn't into it. This was not a good hockey team which managed to post a decent record with pluck, gritty team defense, and sheer smoke and mirrors. I was amazed at the time that team managed to achieve anything, and I'm still amazed now.

For his part, Garon was hardly an All-Star goaltender, posting a mere .894 save percentage. For those of us suffering through Ty Conklin, Jussi Markkanen, and Mike Morrison that year, .894 would have looked fantastic, but to the rest of the league that was average at best. It was the next season where things got really interesting for Mathieu: he was the best goaltender on the team by a walk, both by the numbers and by the eye of everybody who watched the games. Yet, Marc Crawford seemed to have an obsession with getting Garon out of goal: Sean Burke, Dan Cloutier, and Barry Brust each played at least ten games that year, and the net was split so badly that Garon actually led the team with 32 games played.

Mathieu hasn't come out of nowhere. He spent one season as a starter in the NHL already, and would have made it two if his coach weren't mentally challenged. He had 35 NHL games under his belt before he even came to Los Angeles, and his AHL experience is both prolific and almost universally successful, with only one season below a .900 save percentage and two below .918. Mathieu Garon has played over 100 NHL games, whereas on his 30th birthday Roloson had only played about ninety. It wasn't until he moved to Minnesota at age 30 that Roloson got his break, and the parallel with the man who may be replacing him is irresistable. Granted, Roloson burned four years in NCAA hockey, but if Garon had been in a system less insane about its goaltenders than the Habs, Garon's edge in experience might be even larger.

It's not a question of if Garon would establish himself as a legitimate NHL starter, to me. It was only a question of when. Luckily, that may occur as an Edmonton Oiler.

Unless we claim Ilya Bryzgalov off waivers, of course.

Seriously. It's one thing to write about an entertainingly bad team, but this is just a dull, bad team. Every time I get an idea into my head, I glance over to the other blogs and see that everybody else has beaten me to it, because there's so bloody little to talk about we're all latching on to whatever we can get (except for the IOF guys, who are as always churning out cogent and original analysis that I don't understand). Plus, I've really been too busy lately to do my blogging job properly. Ah, well. The muse will come back.

By the way, since I know it's killing you, the last four players that were to be reviewed were, from one to four, Ales Hemsky, Joni Pitkanen, Dustin Penner, and Fernando Pisani. Three of those men are hurt and the other one is the Pilsbury Doughboy, so I think my theory that "if they suck we suck" is looking mighty solid right now.

(Why the late post? Because I had inadvertantly saved this particular profile as a draft instead of as a published article while polishing it up at work. Oops.)

In 2006-07, Dwayne Roloson was 19th in the league in save percentage, 21st in goals-against average, tied for 15th in shutouts, sixth in saves, and seventh in minutes played. Not one spectacular number in the bunch but, considering how utterly God-awful his team was and how little help he got from his backup, not bad. Yet, this year, we're hearing people talking about how the Oilers are waiting to send Roloson out the door. Apparently, he had a bad year last year by ranking average among goalies who played as much as he did and doing it behind a defense that couldn't check its luggage. Only in Oilerville, where we were spoiled by years of Fuhr, Moog, Ranford, Joseph, and Salo, could we complain about a guy being average on a bad team.

Yet, we're declaring Mathieu Garon, a career backup whose numbers in Los Angeles last year were inferior to or marginally better than Roloson's, the heir apparant. Garon can play, there's no doubt about that, and a better backup goalie at a better price you will seldom find. But a starter for this team? Hell, Garon is 30 in January, which means he's not exactly a prospect either. And those leaping on the Devan Dubnyk bandwagon should probably wait until he achieves something more than "pretty good, for a rookie, in the ECHL".

Believe you me, Dwayne Roloson is going to be an important part of this team for at least this season and possibly next. As Calgary and Vancouver demonstrate, a team with an unreal goaltender can hide an awful lot of weaknesses. Roloson is not an unreal goaltender, but as Edmonton circa 2003-04 also demonstrated, a team which is starting Ty Conklin during the stretch run is going to miss the goddamned playoffs. The Oilers have pretty good goaltending, and there's not much else about the Oilers you can say is pretty good.

The main complaint about Roloson is that he is, by Oilers standards, older than hell. 38 in five days time, and I can't even remember the last time the Oilers ran out a player older than 37. In the glorious eighties you were washed up pretty well as soon as you could drink, and since then we've been shedding players as they hit their dying years to free up some cash. That said, 38 isn't exactly ancient in today's NHL. Particularly not for a goalie, and particularly not for a goalie whose spent most of his career saving his body in the backup spot. Roloson was a late bloomer in the first place, after all.

At the same time, though, 38 isn't young. And, lo, we begin to hit the question marks. If the Oilers are going to make the playoffs, Roloson needs to be big. Every bit as big as he was during that glorious first round against Detroit when he could stop Lidstrom, Zetterberg, Datsyuk, Yzerman, Lang, and God on a clean shot without so much as blinking. He certainly can't afford to strain a knee ligament and miss a month. His save percentage needs to be in the ballpark of .910, and while that's a long way from "out of reach" it still requires a goalie on the top of his game. Most importantly, he needs to be able to see that his team is playing Matt Greene, Denis Grebeshkov, Andrew Cogliano, Kyle Brodziak, Robert Nilsson, Tom Gilbert, and Marc Pouliot right now, with guys like Ladislav Smid and Jean-Francois Jacques doubtless to put in appearances. And he needs to recognise that, with a team like that, there's going to be times when Iginla and Tanguay are racing alone from the red line on.

How he deals with those hellish situations will, in no small part, determine how the Oilers will do this year. I have faith in Roloson. I think he's as sure a shot as anybody on this team to put in a pretty solid season and make most of us once again glad to have reliable, consistent goaltending. But if Roloson allows, say, a third of a goal less per game than he otherwise would have done, that could easily be five or six wins. A goalie can have a massive impact on his team's fortunes in the standings, and that's how Dwayne Roloson gets on this list.

Also, if he blows out his ACL, we may as well just swap places with the Falcons and see if anybody notices.

Jarret the Stollman,
Was a jolly happy soul.
With a graphite stick,
And a big ol' shot
And an eye towards the goal.

Jarret the Stollman,
Wanted us to win the Cup,
So he went in on the SJ Sharks,
And he ate them all up.

There's nothing better than writing an article on the importance of a player to a hockey team less than twenty-four hours after said player was one of the heroes in an utterly magnificent season-opening victory. It lends a warm feeling to the heart, a sort of "hey, I'm not entirely stupid after all" sort of feeling. I hasten to add that we got a roaring night from number ten on this list against the best line in the NHL, and I'm going to preen a little at that too.

The questions around Jarret Stoll revolve around two points: his development and his brain. Stoll has already exceeded the norm from his draft position: 206 NHL games and still going strong, with only Matt Stajan and Matthew Lombardi besting him later in the draft, and neither with his production to date. Yet Stoll only turned 25 in June, and while he is approaching his prime, he certainly still has some improving left to do. Stoll's ceiling is that of an excellent second-line centre, with 68 points in 2005-06 representing a very solid figure. Even if Stoll doesn't improve a lick during 2007-08, we're going to be quite happy to have him.

On the other hand, Jarret Stoll as, say, a 75-point, 30-goal man suddenly becomes a brilliant piece of the puzzle. Not a lot of second-line centres in the NHL record that kind of production, and even fewer combine it with Stoll's secondary skills (his positive defense, his top-five faceoff skill, and his on- and off-ice leadership). Although his linemates will prove a stumbling block, it's at least possible for Stoll to hit those lofty targets, and if he can hit 70 points and 25 goals I think we'll all be exceptionally happy.

In the other corner is his skull. Stoll's 2006-07 concussion problems were really the harbinger of doom for the Oilers. When he went down, it effectively marked our end as a contender for the season, as other injuries and ridiculous slumps soon followed. Stoll was obviously not the cause for all that went wrong, but he was a milestone, and his fall left the Oilers with no solutions beyond Shawn Horcoff and Marty Reasoner at centre. Unfortunately, that situation has not much changed, with Marc Pouliot completely failing to take the third-line role many of us had pencilled him in for. Worse, Cogliano seems best on the wing at the NHL level, and any man who'd throw Gagner on the two-line with Raffi Torres and Robert Nilsson must be a Flames fan.

Shawn Horcoff is more important to this team, but with Shawn Horcoff, you more-or-less know what you're going to get. The reason Jarret Stoll is higher on this list is because there's no basement and a pretty high ceiling. Nobody would be surprised if Stoll scrambled his eggs while falling into the boards and missed another forty games. If Stoll mustered ten goals and forty points this year, it would be alarming but not entirely unexpected. If he (as we saw in Game One) absolutely roared and managed to get damned near a point per game, there'd be some huge grins in the Oilogosphere but nobody would ask "where the hell did that come from?"

Luckily, we can count on a few things from Stoll. He's probably still going to win 56% to 58% of his faceoffs, as per usual. His physical conditioning has never been in doubt, and we've historically seen that he has an excellent ability to finish up a season every bit as strong as he started it. In spite of his injury, Stoll was fourth on the team in powerplay points last year, and his faceoff skill and shot alone should ensure that he'll be in that ballpark for 2007-08. Unless his concussion has turned him into an "I LIEK SOUP"-level intellect, and there's no reason to believe it has, he's going to continue to be a powerful influence on the team. He's an alternate captain on this team for road games, and even though the team's got five of the twenty-one skaters on the roster wearing some sort of letter, that still means something.

(See? I got "alternate captain" this time!)

If something bad happens, of course, we're screwed. And there's room for something bad to happen. One conk on the head and he could go down. Almost as bad, his concussion could slow him down: post-concussion syndrome can take quite a while to show up, and there are other, subtler problems which may dog our second-line centreman without taking him out of the lineup. Stoll insists he's fine, but, then, athletes always do. I suspect that if Fernando Pisani had his druthers, he'd be killing penalties while the doctor was operating on his colon. And if Stoll falls or struggles, we're looking forty games of the Rob Schremp Experience dead in the eye. While this would be entertaining as hell, it wouldn't win us a lot of hockey games.

The trouble with Stoll is that even if he is healthy and he does give us a seventy-point season, it's still not going to throw this team over the edge. Realistically, we're expecting sixty-five to seventy points out of Stoll this year. A career year would be nice, but second-line centres don't win Stanley Cups unless they're Mark Messier or Ron Francis. He may have a magnificent individual season and prove, once again, that he's a dazzling hockey player who will hopefully retire an Oiler, but he's not going to the All-Star Game, he's not winning a trophy except maybe the Masterton, he's not going to be Offensive Player of the Month, and Pierre Maguire isn't going to froth at the mouth during a playoff game against Anaheim declaring how much of a monster Jarret Stoll is. At the same time, there's an awful lot of pressure on him, and if he stumbles the Oilers are not going to be looking good.

Which is a tough position for any player to be in. Let's hope he's just scrambled enough that he forgets all about it.

It's that time of year again: opening night, Oilers and Sharks, a whole new beginning after a promising preseason.

Once again, there are season previews all over the Interwebs: it is, after all, Opening Night, and if you were ever going to get one in, this would be the time. Therefore, I present to you, my own South Smythian Rolo-Gator post. However, rather than simply say what everybody knows (this team sucks, no defense, missing the playoffs), I figured I'd go into a bit more detail on some of the factors behind this, and what I think of the individual players who are going to be steering this team for a long time. This preview is very much weighted young, which I only noticed when I was finished: most of my discussion centres around the future of this team as much as the present, probably because this team is so young the terms are largely synonymous.

THE CAPTAIN: Ethan Moreau was crowned as the bearer of the C, inheriting the mantle of his former teammates Jason Smith and Doug Weight. Moreau was the obvious choice in many ways: veteran, long-time Oiler, long-time associate captain, character guy who gets it done in the community. He was the completely counterintuitive choice in others: older, on the downside of his career, a plugger as opposed to a visible player, and somebody who'll probably be either not around or effectively a fringe player when the Oilers are next ready to contend. A guy like Shawn Horcoff or Jarret Stoll might be a core part of our next run, but Moreau seems to be almost a representative of days now gone. Not sure that's the image the Oil wanted to give.

Still, Moreau's going to be a core part of this team, particularly on the penalty kill. Look for him to get the Fernando Pisani Memorial Babysitting-the-Rookies spot with Andrew Cogliano and, until he's sent back to London (and he will be sent back to London), Sam Gagner. Look for him to go EV- nine trillion during this stretch, and look for him to be thrown out with Reasoner and a kid, possibly Pouliot, when Craig MacTavish decides he feels like winning a hockey game or two. I love Chopper, but part of the problem with this team is that we really need a player of his limited skill to be a differencemaker.

THE PHENOM: A guy who's playing nine NHL games this season probably shouldn't be in this preview, but Sam Gagner is getting enough attention to justify it. I was, on balance, against him making this team, but my God was he brilliant in the preseason. The problem is that he's joining the Michel Riesen, Brian Swanson, and Jason Chimera club of kids who were brilliant in the preseason, and it didn't turn out so well for two of them. More importantly, I'm not convinced that Sam Gagner is going to benefit either by playing fourth-line minutes on a playoff team or significant minutes on a really bad team; realistically, only a really bad team is going to be able to give an 18-year-old enough minutes to seriously benefit.

When I look at guys like Gilbert Brule, Marc-Andre Fleury, Ales Hemsky, and other potential All-Stars who aren't epochal talents like Sidney Crosby who played in the NHL during their junior seasons, I don't see guys who have benefited. Hemsky saw most of his rookie campaign from the fourth line and the press box, while Fleury saw it, along with about forty shots per game, as a starting goaltender. Both are now good players, but I can't honestly say that their 20-year-old seasons were a lot better than, say, Cam Ward's 20-year-old season or Paul Stastny's 20-year-old season. The very worst-case scenario for the Oilers is that Gagner plays nine games and does enough to stick around, followed by playing like an 18-year-old and spending most of the year in the press box, hurting his confidence and possibly ruining his year development-wise. The best-case scenario is that he treads water and learns a bit about the game. But I'm worried it'll be more the former than the latter.

THE KIDS: While Gagner might just be here for a few minutes, guys like Andrew Cogliano, Tom Gilbert, Kyle Brodziak, and Denis Grebeshkov are going to be far more important to this hockey club. Andrew Cogliano reeks of a young Todd Marchant, and a young Todd Marchant was a hell of a player for his age group. Add Cogliano's speed and the fact that he's obviously seeing the game just fine, and I'm not worried about him in the least. This guy's going to play in the league for a long, long time, and while I have no illusions about a Calder trophy, I fully expect Cogliano to have a happy enough rookie season and lay the foundation for what's going to be an important NHL career. Similarly, Kyle Brodziak is simply too clever and too skilled to let the game leave him too far behind; he's probably going to end up as a third-liner at best, but I don't think anybody except the guys who threw Thoresen under the bus is going to be too upset with Hot Rod's rookie campaign.

Gilbert and Grebeshkov, though, are wild cards. Both of these guys are kids (everybody who says "but Gilbert's 24!" can shut up; how many defensemen have been within hailing distance of their primes at 24 years old? Not a hell of a lot.) and both of them are playing at a difficult position to learn on the fly. The fact that they're offensive defensemen will give them a break in filling their roles, but with the Oilers' lack of team defense it may hurt them as they'll be forced to play outside their comfort level. Grebeshkov is clearly a solid prospect with an NHL career as a second-pairing guy ahead of him, but Gilbert worries me. He effectively won his job by being a flashy guy in the preseason, but it's easy to look flashy in the preseason, and I'm not sold. I expect him down and Smid up before we get too far.

Worst of all, these four guys are rookies. And while I expect good things out of them for rookies, they're still rookies and that's not going to get us into the playoffs barring a miracle.

THE REJECTS: Ladislav Smid and Patrick Thoresen are starting the season in Springfield, Marc-Antoine Pouliot in the press box. Pouliot effectively blew his own brains out by failing to make a mark in the preseason, but the trouble is that Marc-Antoine Pouliot isn't the sort of guy who makes a mark. He's the sort of guy who just plays reliable hockey, and in a season where the Oilers need both reliable players and players with NHL experience, that's a hefty condemnation of him from the coaching staff. Let's hope that kicks him in the nuts a bit.

Smid and Thoresen, though, were demoted and waived prior to demotion, respectively. Worse, they were sent down for Tom Gilbert and Sam Gagner respectively: two raw kids. That's just appalling. Smid was one of the Oilers' only bright spots last year, as he proved that he was an NHL defenseman with all the tools to play on a first pairing for somebody somewhere someday, while Thoresen started out ripping home goals and ended up as a reliable Pisani-light fourth liner who could kill penalties. There's no reason for two kids who proved themselves over a full season to be in the minor leagues behind flavours of the month, particularly when they're still young and still have plenty of development left in them. Thoresen, one suspects, was a victim of his poor offense in the second half, but casual fans have constantly overlooked his defensive contributions; first-class for a player of his age and experience. Still, Cogliano - Thoresen - Brodziak would be a kid line that you could rely on to not be outworked by anybody and that would never be embarrassed, which is a potent asset. Those two guys had best show the Oilers their mistake in a hurry, because their opportinity to return will likely come soon.

THE SCAPEGOAT: Hello, Matt Greene, and welcome to the Jason Arnott Club! You join such great men as Anson Carter, Marc-Andre Bergeron, Joffrey Lupul, and others who have been solid NHL players run out of town because they had one thing that just rubbed Oiler fans the wrong way. For Greene, it's penalties. This guy doesn't take many stupid penalties; I have never seen Greene just elbow a guy in the open ice for the hell of it, or crosscheck somebody in the back for no reason. Most of his penalties prevent scoring chances and he took 109 minutes last season in 78 games, only six more than Jason Smith and fewer per-game than Steve Staios. Defensive defensemen not named Lidstrom take penalties in this league. That's life. Yet, these penalties, when combined with the fact that he can't handle first lines after 105 NHL games and 24 years of life, is enough to doom him in Oilfan hearts.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. This is how defensive defensemen, particularly hard-hitting gritty defensive defensemen, develop. A finessey guy like Smid has the same flaws, but can hide them with his sheer skill and athleticism. Per game, Matt Greene isn't much more penalised than Jason Smith or Steve Staios were in the same parts of their careers, but Greene has played more hockey in an era where the obstruction calls are twice as tight. To put it another way, the list of Jason Smith types who "broke through" on the same team that drafted them isn't that long, because so many teams lose their patience and give up far too soon. Smith hit the big time on NHL team number three, Staios became a real regular on team three (Atlanta) but only became a core skill player on team four. So shut up and let the kid learn.

THE [SUPER?]STAR: You know what? It's Hemmer time. So far in his career, Ales Hemsky has been a second fiddle to Ryan Smyth as the team's star in the fans' hearts. But Smyth is gone, and this is his team to lead. The guy can skate like hell, has all the stickhandling skill in the world, can set up his teammates beautifully, has a shot better than you think, and plays better defense than nine out of ten guys like him in the league. Now he's the associate captain on home games despite still being on the upswing of his career, he's the straw that stirs the drink on the first line and the powerplay, and guys are saying things like "if Hemsky can play well, then we have a chance." We saw signs of it last year as Hemsky began to take more responsibility both on the ice and in the media, but now's the time to grab the Oilers by the balls and show them he's the guy.

Frankly, anything less than brilliance will be a disappointment. Now, Ales Hemsky disappointing is still a hell of a player who could play for me any time. He's the first guy since the dynasty days I could see skating with Kurri and Gretzky without looking like Dave Lumley. I love, love, love Ales Hemsky, and even if he can't take the leap, I'm so glad he's signed long-term I could scream. But, as much as the Oiler fans love him, his name is never said in the same breath as players like Sundin, Forsberg, Sakic, or Elias, and for good reason. The one bright side about the Oilers not adding any major forwards is that Ales Hemsky now has a chance to add himself to that club.

And I think he'll do it.

THE GIRAFFE: People say Dustin Penner is overpaid. Probably, but that's not what I'm worried about. Money's only money, but we burned serious draft picks to get this kid and they're not coming back. Luckily, we burned draft picks to get a kid with great character, decent and constantly improving defense, enough offensive skills to be a reasonable fit with Horcoff and Hemsky, and enough size that if the Oilers are ever stranded in Siberia Ales Hemsky can cut him open and sleep inside him for warmth. Luckily for Penner, the team is a perfect fit for him: a lack of size, no large top-six forwards other than him, and Matt Greene drawing all the boos so he has time to play his game. A guy who combines his obvious skills with his giganticism can't be all bad.

Penner has a good chance to be better than Ryan Smyth ever was, and that's high praise. It won't come this year, but he should make the team better. Besides, signing, say, Elias instead of this guy would have overlooked the reality that this is a rebuilding team, and we've suddenly found ourselves a pretty nice prospect. To put it in perspective, in his first three NHL seasons, Joe Thornton (the premier power forward and possibly the premier player in the NHL) recorded 7, 41, and 60 points. Penner, despite being years older, posted 45 points as a rookie. And Joe Thornton was a first overall pick who literally broke the rookie cap in the NHL. I find that hopeful.

THE BLUE-CHIPPER: Yet all the potential on this team pales when set next to Joni Pitkanen. Joni Pitkanen is the only guy on this team who I can see winning a Hart someday. Pitkanen and Hemsky both meet the "bouncing the grandkids on my knee" test, but Pitkanen is so raw, so dazzling in what he can achieve that I practically wet my pants when I saw we had traded for him. There is no skill he lacks. He can shoot like Souray, pass like Hemsky, skate like Cogliano. His defense is much, much, much better than his woeful plus/minus last year indicates. Most of what I've heard indicates he's a hard worker with good character. He's certainly got motivation to succeed: he knows full well how last year went and, judging by the fact that he wanted a one-year deal, knows he must do better. If things go well, this is Paul Coffey with better defense. His ceiling is Hockey Hall of Fame. I'm not kidding.

I know that most Oiler fans have hardly watched this guy, but I've been a Pitkanen fan since I first saw him strap on skates. I've tried to find his games on the television over the years, though I've never seen him in person. He might be frighteningly good, and considering how much Finns seem to enjoy Edmonton, he might be here for an awfully long time. I cannot wait to watch this kid spin around Rexall Place. I cannot wait. If we go 0-82, I suspect Pitkanen will still prove adequate compensation.

THE TEAM: I'd be lying if I said I thought this was a playoff team. The Northwest is too strong, the Oilers too young and too short on impact players up front. I see ninth or tenth in the West this year. But it's next year I'm really excited for. A bit more Dustin Penner, a bit more Joni Pitkanen, a bit more Ales Hemsky, a lot more Jarret Stoll. One thing I do expect is some really exciting hockey: a pleasant benefit of the fact that we added about nine zillion offensive players this summer. People have talked about Oilers Hockey for the last decade, even when it's been an obsolete concept. This year, I'd say it's back. And that makes even the losing feel good.

Because there'll be losing. Make no mistake. Final prediction: about .500, 10th in the West. Leading scorer, Ales Hemsky, 95 points.

The Big Ten previews shall continue in spite of the beginning of the season. Hopefully one or two a day.

My apologies for the delay. Obviously, even when I got better, I had a bit of trouble rousing myself to actually write anything on my website. Particuarly with some busy-ness at school, and moving, and everything. The season is about to start, but I shall try to make up for lost time.

When the Oilers signed Sheldon Souray, we may have disagreed here and there on the quality of the signing, but at least we more or less knew what we were going to get. A massive, accurate shot, combined with decent skating and good offensive instincts. Probably twelve to fifteen goals, if we were lucky twenty. He'd probably be our top-scoring defenseman, but in exchange we'd have to tolerate absolutely anaemic defense and a game that could be charitably called "high-event". In short, an expensive Marc-Andre Bergeron writ large.

And we all know how well the cheap Marc-Andre Bergeron was liked.

What most fans have forgotten is that Sheldon Souray can play defense. He made his bones in this league as a defensive specialist in the Jason Smith mold, came into the NHL in 1997 and waited seven years before he scored more than three goals in a campaign. The guy had no offense to speak of but he was still an NHL regular on a pretty damned good New Jersey club and was instantly a core player in Montreal even before he said "hey, scoring is fun!" He killed penalties and played tough matchups against solid players. He was everything the Oilers need right now; he was Matt Greene with a conscience.

Then, in 2002-03, things changed. Souray suffered a serious wrist injury. A serious wrist injury much like Souray's has effectively ended Doug Lynch's career as an NHL prospect. For a defenseman, the wrist is not something to mess around with. The next season, however, Sheldon started throwing caution to the wind and started playing to score. So he became a star in this league, and frankly, he became a more valuable player. Guys started getting by him but he gained more than he lost. He's one of the handful of guys in human history to come back from a potentially career-ending injury much better than he went into it; he was now an All-Star. Pretty goddamned impressive by anybody's standards, and post-lockout he only built on that success, culminating in last year's 26 goals in his contract season.

So I have one simple point: Sheldon Souray has spent far more of his career as a reliable to very good defensive player than he has as a one-dimensional offensive star. For hundreds of NHL games, Sheldon Souray was the guy you throwed out when you didn't want to get scored on. And as nasty as his wrist injury was, it's hard to believe that it took away all the intelligence and skill he had used for the last six seasons to play first-class defense.

Defensive Sheldon Souray is dead forever. But there's no reason to believe that's he's not capable of giving us at least average defense. Remember, Montreal was a defensive hell in 2006-07. There was turnover in the coaching staff, there were struggles, there was Andrei Markov (another predominantly offensive defenseman), Craig Rivet (traded to San Jose), and a bunch of guys who couldn't check their luggage. Worse, the forwards were guys like Saku Koivu, Mike Ryder, Tomas Plekanec, Alexei Kovalev, Chris Higgins, Guillaume Latendresse, Sergei Samsonov, Alexander Perezhogin... the list goes on. The forwards certainly weren't giving the defensemen any help with a cast like that, and I've always felt that the defensive skill of the forwards is an underrated part of a team's overall defense; there's a reason every line Fernando Pisani was on suddenly got a lot better.

So there's reason to believe that, in his own end, Sheldon Souray isn't what we thought he was. The Oilers aren't exactly a hotbed of defense themselves, but I'd take men like Shawn Horcoff, Ethan Moreau, Marty Reasoner, Dustin Penner, Jarret Stoll, and even the underrated Ales Hemsky over just about anybody on the Habs last year. Like last year in Montreal, Souray won't have enough help on his blueline, with Joni Pitkanen playing the Andrei Markov role and Steve Staios doing a passable Craig Rivet impression, but the situation is still improved.

Now, that's not to defend the Souray signing. I was against it then and, though I've cooled, I'm against it now. The money could have been better spent on Scott Hannan or (whisper) Ryan Smyth. But the potential for something brilliant is there. And the simple fact of the matter is, Sheldon Souray's defense is going to dictate a lot of how the Oilers do this year.

So far, the Oil have him babysitting Matt Greene, another participant on this list. So a lot is going to defend on Sheldon Souray's skill as a babysitter. I'm going to pencil him in for 12 goals and 40 points as a baseline: anything above that is a bonus, anything below a disappointment, but barring injury he should be in that ballpark. It's his defense that we have to worry about, and it's his defense which holds his potential. A Sheldon Souray who can handle second-liners in his own zone and successfully kill some penalties will help the Oilers immensely. We don't need him to turn into Nicklas Lidstrom, but if he can take away some of the load from Steve Staios, the Oilers are going to be a far better team for it. And if he can't, then look forward to another high-event season on our blue line.

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