According to Vinesh Pratap from Global, two of the bathrooms at Rogers Place will be expanded in order to be able to better accommodate the ridiculous lines that seem to form during every intermission.

These are the kind of stories that I was born to cover. Bathroom talk? I’m all over it. As an avid Oilers fan and all-star beer drinker, I’d say that the worst part about being at an Oilers game is easily waiting to use the bathroom and I was pretty excited to find out that they were trying to make the situation better. If you’ve never been to Rogers Place, the bathroom lines take forever to move which creates a possibility that you end up missing part of the game because of it. Frankly, it’s annoying to have to play bathroom roulette every time you have to clear space for the next round of cold ones.

For the price you have to pay to get into the building, and the amount of money it took to build in the first place, you’d think that having enough bathrooms to satisfy its customers would have one of the first items on the Rogers Place to-do list. If you thought a quick and stress-free pee was on the horizon when the new barn opened up, you would have been sorely mistaken. How bad did it get? Real bad.

Check out the video above that I tweeted out during Game 1 of the playoffs against San Jose. It took me a little more than 40 seconds to walk from the front of the line to the back of the line, and when you’ve got places to be and bladders to empty that’s a wait that is far too long. As if doing a 15-minute piss dance isn’t bad enough in itself, I actually missed two goals during the playoffs because I was standing in line for the bathrooms. I missed the OT winner for the Sharks in Game 1 because I was in line and then I missed the Oilers’ second goal in Game 5 for the same reason. That’s not cool, and I doubt I was the only one.

While you may say that I just drink too much (I’d probably agree with you), I don’t think that it’s unreasonable to expect to be able to use the bathroom at a venue without having to miss part of the event. I don’t care whether you’re going to the 38th Garth Brooks concert or your first ever Oilers game, you shouldn’t have to make the choice between watching the event you paid for or pissing your pants because you can’t get to a bathroom. Frankly, I’d like to know how many dudes snuck quick leaks in the stairwell over the course of the season because they couldn’t handle the wait? There has to be a couple, right?

In the end, I give the Oilers credit for recognizing that there is an issue and taking steps to rectify it. That said, I don’t know how much expanding only two bathrooms is going to help considering each line seems somehow longer than the next. There’s also the fact that the number of bathrooms needed was grossly underestimated in the first place. How did that even happen? I don’t know who’s job it was to figure how many people will need to pee during a 20-minute intermission, but they missed hard on that swing. While I’m thankful that they’re taking steps to improve the situation, I have a hard time believing that upgrading two of the many many bathrooms is going to help all that much. Maybe it’s time to bring back playing swords?

What say you, Nation?