GDB XXXVIII: A new beginning in the same old year

After a brief two-day respite from Oilers’ hockey, the team of apparent have-nots are left-coast bound today as they take on the Vancouver Canucks at GM Place. And I’m not going to lie to you, Nationeers, things haven’t been so rosy at OilersNation lately.

Let’s recap, shall we: after going 5-0 on the road, the Oilers then went 0-5 — with four of those games taking place at RX1 — completely nullifying fan excitement and causing some people to renounce their season-ticket status. About the only bright light over the last five games was the fact that Oil fans got to see Alexander Ovechkin live; as you’ll recall, his Capitals squad mopped the bloody ice with the hapless Oilers.

Now it might not be the New Year yet, but after a two-day pause now is the time for the Oilers to resolve to begin demolishing teams. The Canucks are 6-4-0 in their last 10, which isn’t that much better than the Oilers when you think about it. Oh sure, they have a much better season record than the Oil (21-16-0 vs 15-18-04), but in the immortal words of the Black Eyed Peas, tonight’s gonna be a real good night.

And if it’s not, I’ll eat this new sweater Santa brought me.

Meanwhile, OilersNation is a ghost town. Gregor’s off to Costa Rica, Wanye’s still exploring the planet, Willis is welding random pieces of metal together in Fort St John, I’m stuck in Calgary, and Brownlee Claus is beating the shit out of all the bad kids with giant coal-filled red sacks.

Yep, it’s been a quiet Christmas here on the internets.

Here’s hoping the deafening silence is enough to get this squad of n’er-do-wells to actually, you know, play a proper hockey game. Because the moment this cluster of insufferably poor players repeats what they’ve done for the last five games, I have World Juniors and the Spengler Cup to watch.

It’ll be close, but I’m going with Oilers 2-1 in OT.

So how many of you are going to be skipping Oilers hockey in favour of other hockey? Or in favour of something completely unrelated to hockey?

And how were your Christmases? Did everyone get as much socks and underwear as I did?