Press play and turn it up before you read the post.

Now before you get up from your desk and take down your life-sized Curtis Glencross poster, burn the Oilers flag on your car and set about finding the Cracker Cats schedule... Before you question how you allowed yourself to believe that the Oilers could make the playoffs for even one moment, before you abandon all hope, let us remind you of something.

Yes we can.

The Oilers may have lost last night in Minnesota, but they didn’t surrender a single point on a playoff spot and are by no means out of anything. This is a team that shouldn’t even have risen out of last place in the West, if you believe what you read and hear. This is a team that has risen to a new level this season, regardless of making the playoffs.

But before you start thinking about next year and give up on this season...

The Oil hit five different posts last night and were just slightly misfiring. The game could just as easily have gone the other way and we wouldn’t have to write a post like this.

Right around the time that all hope was abandoned this season was when the Oilers turned the corner. Right around the time everyone in the OilersNation was saying “No help at the trade deadline, the Oil are screwed” was exactly when they turned it around. Right around the time there was a better chance of Paris Hilton winning a Nobel Prize in chemistry was precisely the moment the Oil clawed and fought back to a point where the average bandwagon-jumping, mouth-breathing fan could say “Hey! The Oil have a chance again!”

The Oilers fought back from the depths of last place with barely any fanfare, no real belief in the team and a pretty empty looking bandwagon. Let’s see to it that, win or lose, playoffs or not, they end the season with a full bandwagon and a Nation that stands squarely in their corner.

“We have been warned against giving people false hope. (But) there has never been anything false about hope.” —Barack Obama

Yes we can.