GDB 2.0: A LITTLE FINISH PLEASE

Alright, Oilers… We’re going to give you an opportunity to start this thing again.  Let’s wipe the slate clean, and start fresh.  I don’t care what happened on Thursday night, or who won the Corsi.  All I care about is you guys scoring some goals.  Let’s be honest for a minute, if you can’t score on Karri Ramo this could end up being a long year. But let’s be positive. That’s not how things are going to go tonight, is it? I see finish in our future! I see goals on the horizon. 

Besides, isn’t Ryan Miller 2000 years old at this point? (He’s 34) How hard a nut can he possibly be to crack? Tell him it’s the playoffs and he’ll start letting in shots from the parking lot. I say, we put on a Murder She Wrote DVD and see where this thing goes. Maybe he’ll bite.  Maybe, to someone in their advanced years like Ryan Miller, looking at anything other than Angela Lansbury is agony. Heartbreaking…

Ok, so Angela Lansbury’s crime solving solutions probably won’t help the Oilers win hockey games.  All I’m saying is that it wouldn’t hurt to try lulling the other team/players to sleep until the Oilers can finally figure out how to start the game on time.  But, I digress.

If the Oilers can play a full game like they played in the 2nd period against Calgary, we may just end up being okay. The Oilers were murdering the Flames in terms of possession, and as the summer of stats told us, possession is important. (Math!!!) If the Oilers can somehow outshoot teams 2 to 1 with regularity (I know, I know), this season may actually go somewhere. To make that happen, the Oilers will need to have more periods like the 2nd period against Calgary, and a whole lot less of those 3rd periods.

To get the win tonight, the Oilers will also need better goaltending from Viktor Fasth than they got from Ben Scrivens.  That’s not to say that the loss to Calgary was Scrivens’ fault, it wasn’t, but they’ll need to get those big saves to cover up their mistakes – that didn’t happen on Thursday.  Luckily, this is the first year in a while that the team seems to have 2 competent options in net.  If Fasth can make some big/timely saves tonight, I think the Oilers will be well on their way.  This isn’t the 1997-98 Canucks we’re talking about here – there are no Pavel Bure’s over there anymore.

Attention to details, boys. It’s time to grow a set and make some consistency happen.

OBVIOUS GAME DAY PREDICTION: Taylor Hall’s agent finally lands him a Chapstick endorsement.  Hall celebrates by lighting Ryan Miller up with a hat trick, and blowing a kiss to his mom in Kingston.