Monday Mailbag – August 3rd

Is it really August already? At least that means we’re getting closer by the day to seeing our sweet Connor dawn an Oilers uni in real games. Until then you will have to settle for the mailbag. As always, I need your questions to make this segment work. If you have a question you’d like to ask you can email me at baggedmilk@oilersnation.com or hit me up on Twitter at @jsbmbaggedmilk. For now it’s time to grab a coffee and learn something. Enjoy.

As a fan it obviously is not a great thing. I mean, to an extent I understand the price increase due to the new building, but they’re already expensive enough as is at Rexall, so any increase seems excessive at this point. Just to pay for myself to sit in the upper bowl and have a few beers costs me close to, if not more than $100 so I can’t even imagine trying to bring a family to a game at this point. And I think, worst case scenario, the building will start to look more like the Air Canada Centre; half the seats will be taken over by corporations and the lower bowl will be made up mostly of older men in expensive suits tapping away on their Blackberry’s rather than actually watching the game. I CAN’T WAIT!

I don’t see it hurting the atmosphere. It sucks that some won’t be able to renew, but others will come in and the excitement will be fine. Oilers fans are jazzed up like they haven’t been since the 2006 Cup Run and the combination of a new rink and a competitive team will likely make the building more raucous than it has been the past nine years.

It looks incredible! I hope families can afford to attend, because the Oilers right now matter to the entire population. Part of that comes from being able to see these men play live. If the Oilers become an exclusive product, there’s a danger that a large part of the fanbase will drift away.

Can’t say for sure until we know the renewal rate. That aside, the Oilers will be icing the best team they’ve had in a decade in a fancy new building, so I don’t see a negative impact on “atmosphere” compared to what we’ve seen at Rexall in the last nine seasons.

The big problem with the price hike for tickets at the new barn is that less kids will be able to go. Taking your family for a night out will get really expensive if you’re looking at buying tickets for you and your kids. The atmosphere won’t suffer though. The Oilers are on the verge of being competitive for the first time in almost a decade – this is big news. Seeing a winning team will mean that people will dish out the sheckles to see it, and that includes me.

That’s a really interesting question. I have a hard time believing that the the 06 run is more responsible for the constant sell outs and non-stop support through these latest dark years than the promise of Hall/Ebs/Nuge/Yak/Drai/etc finally taking the team back to the promise land. But at the same time it did instil in the fans the hope that literally anything can happen if you make the playoffs. 

For me personally the 06 run really did cement my Oilers fandom; I bounced around from good team to good team as a child of the 90s, and we all remember how lean the early 2000s were. As a teen I almost begrudgingly started cheering for the Oilers because all of my friends did, as there was not much to hang your hat on as an Oilers fan back then. So maybe that run did have a similar effect on people our age as it did on me. It put the Oilers back on the map and, as I said before, made us believe that anything was possible after a seemingly improbable run. Now if you’ll excuse me I have to go watch the CBC intro for game seven and weep like a baby for the 50,000th time.

No doubt it garnered new fans. I think drafting Hall, RNH etc kept more fans believing than the Cup run. The Cup run helped for a few years, then team was terrible, but HOPE arrived in 2010 and that has kept fans holding on until now. It is impossible not to respect the loyalty of fans who purchased season tickets, mini packs or single games.

I think the Oilers have gathered fans from the Glory Days, the Marchant goal and the 2006 run. I’m hopeful we can all share in a fabulous run together. It would be nice to party together on Jasper avenue, all the generations. I’ll wear my blue hair!!!

The 2006 playoff run bought management some time after a lot of bad years. That time long ago ran out and has been reflected by an increasing number of empty seats despite official sell-outs.

The 2006 Cup run kept people in my age bracket hooked on hope. I turned 30 this year and I remember hitting up Whyte Ave every single night in that Cup run. The parties were legendary. I remember those nights vividly and I’m looking forward to when it happens again. 

I think you basically answered your own question; an NHL season combines the length of an NBA season with the full contact of the NFL. And on top of that you have to have the skill and coordination to not only skate, but to stick handle and shoot. I mean, I really love watching football, but how many times have we heard of guys in the NFL who didn’t even pick the game up until their last year of high school, or for some, in college? I mean, there are positions in football where, for all intents and purposes, you can excel at just by being big. Hockey combines so many different skills, and is played at such a high speed it boggles my mind sometimes that not everyone on earth is entertained by it. And as we’ve seen a million times over, if you can’t put that all together at a high level when you’re a CHILD, the odds of you making it as a pro are basically non-existent. That is a stupidly high level of difficulty if you ask me. As our friend the Royal Half would say, “LET’S SEE YOU DO IT ON SKATES LEBRON!”

Every sport has different physical challenges. I don’t see hockey players being better, just different.

I think hockey players are pretty normal people. Not a lot of standing on ceremony. They use the F-bomb MORE than we do!

The ability to master the unnatural skill of skating at the highest level. Wheeling around on the edges of metal blades is a lot more specialized than running, jumping and catching etc.

What separates hockey players with other pro athletes is the fact that they play a contact sport for 82 games in a season. Basketball play 82 games but there’s no way it’s as physical as hockey. Baseball, of course, plays 162 games in a pro season and that’s because you can appear grossly out of shape and still make the pros if you’ve got the skills. You know it’s true.

As long as the NHL remains a full contact game I don’t think we’ll ever see fighting completely go away. I don’t buy the “polices the game” aspect of it, but I completely understand how two guys scrapping reduces tension and leads to less stupidity like swinging a stick at another player’s head in the heat of the moment. I absolutely think there’s a place in the game for fighting, but as is already happening we’ll see a natural reduction in fighting as the years go on, and more and more emphasis is focused on skill and speed.

Stats proved that only 3-4% of concussions occurred from fights. It grabbed the attention of some, but the reason fighting is down is because fewer teams dress guys who can only fight. There are fewer players who are willing to fight now and that means fewer fights. The players will decide how often fights occur, and with fewer willing participants I suspect the decline will continue, but it will never be out of the game, and I don’t believe it should be.

It’s going the way of the Edsel. Look it up. Seriously. It was a thing. Edsel.

The vast majority of concussions aren’t caused by fighting, but to answer your question it’s obvious the aim is to reduce incidents of fighting, as has been the trend.

Concussions will always be a part of contact sports whether they take fighting out of hockey or not. I think the guys that play the game know the risks and are willing to put themselves out there. If I had the chance at playing pro hockey knowing the risks of concussions I would do it in a heartbeat. Wouldn’t you? I bet the guys that are fighters in the NHL feel the same way every day. 

I definitely would not want to be on the ice at the same time as Zdeno Chara. He’s a honest-to-goodness giant, and can just maul guys out there like a damn bear. I couldn’t imagine trying to stand in front of the net while Big Z lays his 45 foot long stick into the small of your back with the strength of a car crusher, let alone see him barrelling at you as you try to cut across the blue line! NO THANKS!

Wayne Gretzky dominated his peers like no other.

Kenny Meier. He was filthy. Now, this was floor hockey in 1971, so his stats aren’t at hockeydb.

Wayne Gretzky. Not the biggest. Not the fastest. Not the toughest. Career points leader by a $20 cab ride. Speaks for itself.

A guy like Gretzky comes to mind because he was absolutely dominant but to me the hardest player to play against was Mark Messier. How many players got caught with a blindside elbow to the melon while the Moose was out there? Remember the Mike Modano clip where the paramedics drop the stretcher? Mark Messier. Remember when the captain of the Rangers guaranteed a win and then went out and scored a hat trick? Mark Messier. He could beat you with physicality or he could be you on the scoreboard. Mark Messier was a warlord and the toughest player to play against.