Baggedmilk on #theLOCKERROOM: The pre-season countdown begins, and the Mike Babcock situation

Happy Wednesday, Internet friends, and welcome to yet another chapter of your ol’ pal Baggedmilk’s adventures in radio. As I do every week, I jumped on the air with the boys on The Locker Room for a quick segment to talk about the Oilers while also offering my takes on anything else that’s going on in the world.

To kick off this week’s segment, we started with a conversation about the pre-season kicking off on Sunday against Winnipeg and how this has to be the least sexy pre-season we’ve had in quite some time. Outside of a spot here or there, the Oilers’ roster is basically set, meaning that there won’t be many storylines to follow outside of tracking the progress of a few individuals. Sam Gagner is one of those players many of us were eager to watch, but unfortunately for the third-time Oiler, his hips aren’t far along enough just yet for him to participate. Who knows what that means for his PTO, but I suppose time will tell. The Oilers also announced yesterday that Connor Brown will see limited action in the pre-season as he works to bring himself back from the ACL injury that kept him off the ice for all but four games in 2022-23. Does that mean Brown isn’t as far along as we hoped he would be, or is this more a product of easing him in given that he’s already on the team? Lastly, we wrapped up this week’s segment with an extended chat about the Mike Babcock situation in Columbus and how the guy just can’t seem to get out of his own way with these old school tactics. Unable to adjust to the times, Babcock was given another chance at the NHL level but ended up ruining it because he simply could not adjust to the players he would be coaching, and it’s a wild fall from grace for the once-revered coach.