We suppose you can’t judge a book by its cover, except in this case you can. The Oilers closed out an otherwise fairly inspired season opener the other night with a five alarm asstastic final act. We also suppose that Khabibulin can’t really be blamed for going out of his crease and misplaying a puck with the game on the line, except that you absolutely can too. He couldn’t have thrown a bigger wet blanket on the new season if he had picked off the Cirque du Soleil acrobats with a sniper rifle during the *ahem* opening ceremony for the season.

But, it’s a whole new day with a whole new opponent and one game into the season isn’t nearly time enough to pass judgment on this squadron. We have at least seven cycles of unreasonable optimism and soul crushing bouts of pessimism before we do that. Say want you want about Khabibulin, he showered off quick as a flash after game one and came out to face the assembled media hordes. That kind of courage is usually reserved for war veterans, firefighters and people willing to share a toilet seat with Paris Hilton.

GDB II be on deck and the Dallas Stars be riding into town high on the confidence that comes from being written off before the season starts by basically every single publication of note. If that isn’t enough to get you down, pretend Marc Crawford is your new coach. How the Stars managed to let a decent coach like Tippett go, only to bring in the Craw, completely escapes us. Luckily we could give two jolly squirts about the Dallas Stars or their saucy ice girls.

Pitying the Stars ain’t the order of the day. Handing them a face smashing defeat is. With a power play firing at 0% and a penalty kill that is 33% effective — how could things go awry?

What are you planning to do for the game tonight? Are you going to RX1 to drink $8 beers? Sucker. Are you going to stay in your basement in your bathrobe and watch it on pay per view for a piddling $92 dollars? Please. Why not come and join us at the first Nation party of the Season at the newly opened bar called The Pint? It’s at 10125 109 Street. Could that be any closer to where you are at RIGHT NOW?

For those of you who haven’t been to a Nation Party before, they are a grand time. No one overtly makes a great display of being there “for the party.” Instead we stand on opposite sides of the room, much like the dances you attended in Junior High, undressing each other with our eyes. But unlike those awkward dances of yore, we now serve booze – and reasonably priced booze at that. Yes, after a few Oilers goals and a few BLs, we are knocking over tables and smashing bottles on each other’s heads. Or not – you decide.

Please, please, please come to the Pint. Gregor will be there and you know he wants to see you. And we’ll be raffling off two tickets to the next Battle of Alberta on Thursday.

How’s about this brand spanking new Nation site?! Isn’t it everything you dreamed it would be in between dreaming dreams about Myley Cyrus being three years older, stranded at the Millwoods Bus Depot and looking for a ride somewhere? That is exactly how it has turned out for us too.

Yep, the Nations are looking pretty dang awesome these days and we couldn’t be more proud of the fine folks that have done the fine work to get these fine results. Over the next couple of weeks they will be finalizing it all, which will include moving over all of the old articles, pictures and commentary to our new home. Then they will add in some new features (including the much ballyhooed EDIT button) and a new thing that is pretty freaking wicked if you ask us. Shouldn’t be long till you can use this site for all sorts of things including filing your 2010 tax return!*

*no, not really.

Some of us might find a hiccup in the site somewhere or have a suggestion as to how things might be even further improved. That right there is the path to forward progress, and we invite you to send any suggestions you may have to our special friend over at bingofuel [at] oilersnation [dot] com. If you want to stop progress and keep things the same forever we offer you this cautionary tale:

Know what happens if you don’t take care of yourself by getting plastic surgery or a major database upgrade from time to time? You end up look old and tired and super crappy, like this undoctored picture we found of Lindsay Lohan last night. Remember if you will, that she is only 23 years old but looks like she just crawled out of a crypt.

We won’t let your Nation get that ugly.

Ever.

You have our word on it.