Random Thoughts: Oilersnation Open, Josh Park, Kool-Aid Season, and more

It’s sunny Saturday morning in Edmonton and that means your ol’ pal Baggedmilk is back with another round of Random Thoughts. As I do every weekend, I’ve dumped my brain’s contents out into this here blog post and I invite you all to join me for a leisurely tour through my brain bank.

Yesterday, the Oilers posted this video of them putting the ice back in at Rogers Place and it got me feeling really excited that a new season is just around the corner. It’s not even that this video was anything overly crazy — we’ve seen the ice get put in countless times over the years — but it does make the 2021-22 campaign feel a little bit more real. Soon the guys will be back in town, training camp will be underway, and we’ll all get back to arguing about line combinations and the powerplay until we’re blue in the face. Even though this has been the shortest offseason we’ve had around here, I still find that we’re getting to the point in the year where I’ve been getting antsy about watching the boys do their thing again and this ice install video only has my taste for Kool-Aid season ramping up.

I know the most likely scenario for Dylan Holloway is that he’ll head to Bakersfield for at least the start of the season, but I wonder how long it will be before he forces his way onto the big club’s lineup. With 35 points (11G, 24A) in 23 games, Holloway’s NHLe lands somewhere around 42 points over a full season, and I wonder how much of that offensive potential he’ll bring with him into his first year as a pro. Would it really be that unreasonable to think that he could be with the Oilers in the last half of the season if he manages to score with some consistency at the AHL level? Kailer Yamamoto played a total of 50 AHL games (I know there was some injury time in there) before making the jump to the NHL, and I wonder how close to that number he will be before making the leap to the next level?

On Thursday, we held our fourth Oilersnation Open golf tournament out at Cougar Creek and it was another incredible day that was only made possible by all of you.  Before the tourney, the last event we were able to throw before the world shut down was our trip to Vegas in February of 2020, and I cannot even begin to describe how amazing it was to be able to get together for the first time in 18 months. From the time we pulled up to the course to start setting up, to the amazing dinner, to watching Caroline and Woz handle the prize giveaways, this ON Open was one of the most fun days that I can remember and I wanted to spend a minute saying thank you to all of you that attended for making it so special. Without you fine folks, we wouldn’t have been able to put on such a great event while also raising a nice chunk of money for Gregor’s grads, and I can’t thank everyone enough for coming out and making this event an overwhelming success.

If you’ve loved any of the videos we’ve posted on the site and our social media over the last year and change, then you should know that it was our boy Josh Park that made all of it. Not only is Josh incredibly talented, but he just always ‘got it’ in terms of what we were trying to do with our video game and he levelled us up in a very real way. The guy is about as Nation as it gets, ya know? Unfortunately for us, that amazing talent led Josh to getting scooped up by the OEG as a major contributor to their video department, and it’s an opportunity that’s well deserved to say the least, but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to miss him. To take you behind the scenes a little bit, I always have new people send me the content they make for approval before it goes up, but with Josh, I ended up taking the reigns off him quite quickly because I wanted to see what he was making at the same time you all did. Whether it was the season hype videos or memes or the mashup he made when Nuge signed his extension, the level of content that this guy made for us was always amazing and I’m certainly going to miss having him on our side. That said, if there’s anyone that deserves an opportunity to get called up to the show and showcase his talent to a wider audience, it’s Josh Park and I could not be happier for him.