Picking the goat
Wanye
September 15 2009 10:25AM
Picking the Goat for the 2009-10 hockey season is almost more difficult than picking the Star. Firstly, one has to take a look at the team’s overall chances and the likelihood someone is going to take multiple blamings as the season wears on. The better your team, the less likely your goat is going to take a beating.
Say you are one of the eleven remaining fans of the Harlem Globetrotters.You have a reasonably good chance that your team won’t lose a single game all season and odds are that the blistering basket shoot-scoring of the Washington Generals won’t keep you up late on most nights. In this instance you have no real need for a Goat as success seems assured.
Now say you are a fan of the local ice hockey squadron, the Edmonton Oilers. Following their liver shredding Cup run in 2006, the Oilers have amazingly missed the playoffs three years in a row. This has not gone over well in the OilersNation where fans have become surely at best and murderous at worst. We had a long discussion with some of the boys about the temperature of the crowds that will enter RX1 this coming season. What will the prevailing mood be? Hopeful hope? Anger filled anger? Something inbetween like tepid indifference? It really could go either way.
The purpose of picking a Goat is to be able to hang your hat on an Oiler and blame him for the entire buffet table of bitter tasting woe that the Oilers serve to us on such a regular basis of late. When you name a particular player as your Goat he becomes the whipping boy for the entire team and a theraputic release for all things bad.
Ales Hemsky whiffs one? Damn the Goat for passing him the puck in such an off tempo manner. Oh it wasn’t the Goat that passed him the puck? Damn his poor positional play causing a hurried pass. Goat boy wasn’t on the ice for the whiff? Curse his bench sitting technique all to hell!
Now should your Goat actually cause some sort of unfortunate incident on the ice? Now you’re talking! Friends witnessing the gaffe will often look to you and say “good call going with ___ as your Goat this season. That guy is twelve shades of shit.” You can then sit back, smug in your predictory skills, almost taking pleasure at the brutalness of Senor Goato.
This is the way we pass the winter Nation. Until we figure out a way to keep Edmonton 24 degrees year round, this is the best we can do.
2009-2010 Goat Selecto
Last year we famously picked Dennis Grebeshkov to be the Goat for the season. Though some in the Nation figured his dramatically improved play, team leading plus/minus (or something) and (something something) meant he had turned the corner as an NHL player they couldn't be more wrong. While we were focused on his terrible play, worse attitude and awful results we found that we actually began to truly dislike him as the season wore on.
Think we hated Grebs last year? Check back now that it is 2010 and Goatie McGrebeshkov has signed a 3 million dollar deal. A 3 million dollar deal!? Has the entire world gone crazy? What in the sweet holy hell is going on? Remember when Grant Fuhr signed that crazy free agent contract with the Leafs? What did he make, like $1.8 MM or something? Now Grebeshkov makes 3 million? How do you think that makes Grant Fuhr feel? We will tell you how it makes Grant Fuhr feel. Not very good! And he has found a second life on the celebrity golf circuit.
No, no, no. This won’t do at all. We love Grant Fuhr. Screw you Grebs, looks like you are up as the Goat deuce years in a row.
One final note
It’s (Preseason) Game Day Bitches.
*runs off to liquor store, because if the hobos downtown have taught us anything it’s that unemployed people drink whenever the hell they please*
@ Ender the Dragon:
I seem to remember more of them too - I looked at ever article written by Wanye & that is all I could find.
Must have been the booze/pharmaceutical induced hallucinations that had me thinking there were more. :P
Ender the Dragon wrote:
HAHAHA - I knew there were more. The 75' tall David Staples with the AM-RAM missiles was pretty funny!
I'm a Scientist! wrote: Ladies and Gentlemen… MR. RICHARD SIMMONS HAS JOINED THE PARTY!!!!! *crickets* *more crickets*
I said Mike the mouth was rubbing off on me - not rubbing me off.
*looks around exitedly expecting laughter, then hangs head in shame and heads back to mom's basement*
Refuses to think Negatively wrote:
*slow clap... so slow that 8 year old sugar fiends fall asleep between connections*
Full TV schedule released, 80 games total, 40 on Sportsnet: hxxp://oilers.nhl.com/club/news.htm?id=498644#2009-10_Edmonton_Oilers_Broadcast_Schedule
WTF is with Dec 31st where it says "SN Calgary" Edmonton vs Calgary in Calgary better damn well be on the TV here.
Goat: Gagne. Prove me wrong Sam, prove me wrong. Your faceoff skills, turnovers, and weak shot were laughable last year, laughable I say!... except for the fact that you play for my favourite team, which makes it less funny.
Goat: Steve Smith.
I just can't quit him.
@ Jay: Seriously?
The three Billy goats gruff:
Staios, Gilbert, Grebs
@ Gunner:
Ganger was my second choice. If he has another slow start it could be disaster for this team.
I'm going to have to go with JDD.
W.T. suggests Kevin Lowe remains the biggest goat of all. He continues to show up on local air waves talking about players when he is the one that signed all these goat horn contracts. W.T. suggests second goat is Katz for actually thinking he can build an entertainment center with public money and he has all the control of it. W.T. suggest Bill LaForge as third goat. ANYONE who stands up in front of the media saying the Oilers lost lots of money last year. If this is true, W.T. suggests Katz wasn't too smart to buy the team that losses all this money
The goat for the upcoming season is:
Bryan Lerg............ JK
Jeff Deslauriers, thats JDD to the rest of you.
F*&^U#* me in the goat a.s.s.
Fiveandagame wonders if Fiveandagame can pick a poster for Fiveandagame's goat this year. I wonder who Fiveandagame thinks it could be.......
@ W.T.:
It's Patrick LaForge by the way....
77 D Tom Gilbert 82 5 40 45 6 26 2 0 1 107 4.7 37 D Grebeshkov 72 7 32 39 12 38 2 0 0 62 11.3
you pay gilbert4 whats so bad for grebs at 3 i think you suffer from doncherry syndrome and just dont like europeans wayne gretz
Is any one else having problems "connecting to the server"??
Is any one else having problems "connecting to the server"?? For the game that is
@ R-DAWG: Your missing a fight.
(I mean) You're missing a fight. Try reloading the website and linking right from the main page.
All good now!
SULLY!
Nice shot Sully!! And a helper for Storts
~smells like Stanley to me~
Chris wrote:
~plan the parade!~
The Saddledome event host looks like a castoff from the set of The Hills Have Eyes.
Nice Donkey Punch!
What fight was the color guy watching when storts pounded prust?
Ha. Nice calgary announcing on that one. "oh stortini is just hanging on now! He's hugging him!". Pfft, stortini fed that chump
Who made that hit?
@ ScubaSteve: I think that was Minard.
Also, Harvey the Hound groping that girl in the stands was hilarious.
Which web browser are you guys using? Firefox shows a big pile of blue splash page and not much else. After all this talk by Laforge and co. about how big Oil Country is, you think they'd buck up and make sure the server could handle the traffic.
@ Rusty Shackleford:
Just like any calgarian, Harvey is a pervert..
@ David S:
I'm using safari, and it's working just fine
ScubaSteve wrote:
Tanks ScubaSteve.
@ David S:
In the actual GDB someone mentioned that firefox was screwing up. IE is working fine for me.
This color guy is a tool.
"Nystrom might double his 5 goals from last year, and might even reach double digits."
Wow, just wow
@ ScubaSteve:
I couldn't believe the way their crew was calling the Stortini fight. Apparently Prust was smacking Stortini around and Zach was keeping up the Huggy Bear rep? Were they watching the same fight?
So let me get this straight. CALGARY HAS ICE GIRLS NOW???!!?!!
Its war I tell you. War.
Rusty Shackleford wrote:
Thanks Rusty. Just got home form work and didn't have time to sift through the thread(s). Sh!tty coverage. atdhe.net has better feeds.
@ Gunner: Gunner wrote:
Seriously. Not like I want him to be a goat. The franchise has a lot riding on him. We would be better off if he becomes the superstar we need and of course that's what we all want (myself included) BUT! I need to see some more from him at the start of the seasons, rather than just showing up the last 20 games (see '08/'09 season).
Keep it up POS!
Chris wrote:
that was me, sorry
Chris wrote:
Sully Again!
~Shine up the Rocket Richard Trophey~
W.T. wrote:
I couldn't agree with you more.
hey you know whats awesome? OILERS ON THE INTERWEBS!!!!
Ender the Dragon wrote:
Those are old...I will have new ones next week a long with a female that some of you might enjoy taking a gander at from time-to-time.
Did you see that PP, movement, shots, puck control..... all good signs