With the NHL (and other sports leagues) wisely deciding to suspend the season as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, we’re left with a gaping hole in our lives and no way to fill it. For a lot of us, sports is a fantastic way of escaping our daily lives and to have that taken away has been tough to deal with for a lot of us. For sites like this one, we’re left in a position of wanting to keep the show going but not knowing how to proceed or what we’re even going to write about. How many ways can we cover the same story? How can we keep going with so much uncertainty ahead of us? I don’t know for sure, but I do know that we have to.

Before we go on, I think I have to start by saying that I fully support the decision to suspend the NHL season until we can get a better idea on what the hell is happening right now. People are getting sick, people are scared, people are buying toilet paper like they’ve got recipes the rest of us don’t know about, and it’s incredibly important to take any preventative measures possible to try and curb the rate at which this thing is spreading throughout our society. We all need to do what we can to flatten the curve on this and I was relieved to see professional sports leagues doing what’s right. Frankly, had the NHL tried to soldier on in spite of what’s happening all around us, it would have been doing so out of pure greed and with a total disregard for the health of society at large. So, the human being in me is glad that things played out this way because it was the only way this could go. Suspending the season was the only choice and it was the right one.

I’ve said this a bunch of times already but it bears repeating that I know I’m not smart enough to try and figure out how we make it through this, I’m just a stupid blogger that goes by one of the dumbest pseudonyms you’ll ever hear, but I do know that I feel the need to keep creating content. I know that everyone that writes at Oilersnation wants to keep going and writing about the game we love to not only cover the news du jour but also to offer every single one of us a mental break from what’s happening in the world. We want you to be able to come to the site on a daily basis and find fresh content to read and argue with each other about. Just because there are no games being played, that doesn’t mean there’s not still plenty to talk about.

So what does that look like? I have plenty of ideas but I’d also love your help in figuring it out (more on that in a minute).

The first and obvious thing that we’re going to do is continue to cover the COVID-19 story and how it affects the NHL as a whole. Seeing as this is a global issue that is likely to go on for a while, we’re going to make sure that everyone is up to date on how the Coronavirus continues to affect the NHL and Edmonton Oilers. From the cancellation itself to the announcement that the Oilers would pay their part-time workers, we’ll have everything here as it relates to our boys.

The next thing that came to mind was reaching out to all of you, the community that makes this website work in the first place, to find out how you’re dealing with the stoppage and how it’s affecting your life. I want to put together a “Letters to the Editor” type of weekly segment that where I’ll take some of the thoughts you email me (baggedmilk@oilersnation.com) and post them every Sunday to give you guys a voice in all of this as well.

Getting a little bit weirder, I’m thinking that it would be fun to provide a game day experience just as we usually would for classic games or classic playoff series provided that I can figure out a way that we can all watch the same thing together. Some people have told me that there are full games on YouTube but I haven’t really found anything where we could make this happen consistently, so if you have any ideas on how we could make this work, I’d love to hear it. I’m hoping that Sportsnet will start scheduling classic Oilers games so that we could watch it together and argue about what’s going on as if it was any other day. Obviously, watching games from years ago wouldn’t be as exciting as the playoff push that was stolen from us but I’m thinking that we could still try to make some fun out of a few reruns anyway.

If you’ve been a Nation citizen for any length of time, you’ll surely remember the ridiculous photoshop contests that we used to throw on the regular. Well, it’s time to bring back the photoshop contests so I’m encouraging all of you to get your creative minds working and start practicing because we’ll be kicking off the first contest shortly.

As you may have already seen, we’re going to look back at some of the biggest stories in Oilers history, including monumental trades, free agency signings, turning points in the franchise, and a lot more. One thing we all agreed on is that this stoppage provides us with an opportunity to look back in time and see what we can learn from the past, or, at the very least, dust off a few memories that we’ve probably all forgotten about.

Before the NHL suspended play, we were having a lot of fun with this playoff push so we’ll also be looking back on the past five months and revisiting some of the best goals and moments from the 2019-20 season so far. I don’t know about you guys, but re-watching all of Connor and Leon’s goals from the year would be an excellent use of my time and reposting them here on the site so that we can all appreciate the dynamic duo is something worth doing imo.

No matter what happens with the NHL season, we think it’s important to maintain our community and ensure that we’re staying in touch with each other. Sure, there’s no doubt how much it sucks to have hockey taken away from us, but the decision was made for the greater good of society and now we have to find a way to work through it. For us, that means making sure that the content machine doesn’t stop and we’d love to include you folks and your ideas on the site as much as possible to make that happen. Have an idea that you’d like to see or read about? Feel free to drop it in the comments section or fire me an email and we’ll do our best to make it happen.

From all of us here at Oilersnation, I just wanted to say how much I appreciate all of you guys for the support and words of encouragement. You fine folks make this machine work and I’m very grateful for everything.