ROME BURNS: PART I

So I am currently wrist deep in a new startup company and it
is going to be offered in many languages and this requires me to be on the road
all the time. It’s like the least difficult job I have ever had. But though I’m gone, my heart is buried 12 feet under Jasper Ave and 109 street and I
read all the articles, watch all the highlights and swear at my Oilers App on the regular. The Copper and Blue are and will be out of sight for the foreseeable future but they are not even close to be out of mind.

It is absolutely crushing my heart and soul how lost this
team has become. Everything sucks, everyone sucks and even my beloved Jordan
Eberle’s tears are no longer curing cancer completely, they just prolong a patient’s life an extra 100 years. The comments sections at OilersNation read
like a witch burning in Salem circa 1715 and twitter has so many
#herecometheOilers memes my phone turned off last time I searched the hashtag post
game.

It’s dark, dark, dark.

So like any good Oilers fan I have taken time out of my day
to sit down and think about how crappy things really are, what has gone wrong
and what can be done. That noise you hear is the people I am working on this
new app with saying “DAMMIT WANYE WE HAVE REAL WORK TO DO HOW DARE YOU TAKE A
WHOLE DAY OFF TO WRITE HOCKEY BLOGS?!” #becauseitstheOilers that’s why.

I wish I could be a calm all American hero like Malibu from American Gladiators. He can sit back with cosmic rays and a couple of brewskis and beautiful babes and let Mother Nature bring him back from a terrible kick to the noggin. Plus look at that head of hair and California tan – of course he can take it all in stride. Us Oilers fans have been kicked continuously without mercy in the baby bags for almost 9 straight years. We aren’t nearly as at peace with things.

I want to be cool like Malibu and say that I’m not affected by all of this the least. But it is an all you can eat buffet of shit around these parts and has been for too long. And I am getting tired of eating shit.

The Oilers being as shitanusly bad at the Ice Hockeys for as
long as they have has turned my already black heart into solid titanium fused
coal. Them being such losers for so long makes me feel like a loser in my day to day life. Which makes no sense but there you have it – I live and die with this team like all of us left on the bandwagon sadly do.

I don’t even remember what it was like to watch a hockey game that
mattered, much less the excitement of being in the playoffs. It has been moved
to my long term memory along with plotlines from Inspector Gadget episodes from
the early 90s, lyrics to the entire album of “12 inches of Snow” and cursive
handwriting.  

These past 9 years were my prime drinking years too. I could
have been such a good drunken playoff edition hockey blogger. I should have
been being hauled out of the Pint by the City Police for trying to kiss
everyone in drunken celebration from the Oilers tying up the series with the
Wild in April, 2011*  

I should have been
the guy encouraging the young ladies of Edmonton to flash their naughty bits on
Whyte Ave in the playoff run of 2013** Being the OilersNation guy might have
meant something to chicks if the bandwagon was full! GAH

Damn you Oilers – it was my God given right to have at least
two solid playoff runs screaming on Twitter by now. Reenacting elaborate game
day good luck rituals daily, wasting most of the work day in the process. Calling
in to Strudwick’s show post games and demanding to be allowed on the air to
gush over the team’s “INTERSTELLAR PLAY TONIGHT WOOOOOOO”

Instead what did we get? Nothing. No arrests. No flashings.
No chicks. Having to throw sullen Draft Day parties and talking with my fellow
sullen Oilers superfans as we pin all our hopes and dreams picking a needle in a haystack among a few hundred
pimply faced 18 year olds while other teams iced lineups of MEN who smashed and
scored and made legends of themselves. For 9 years we have been going through
this. And it’s really like 1 year in 15 if you really want to look backwards in
time.

If you had told me when we started OilersNation that it
would have worked as well as it did but the Oilers would be as bad as they have been, the two supremely shocking facts sitting in my brain at the same time would have made my head
explode.

IM IN THE PRIME OF MY LIFE YOU HEARTLESS BASTARDS.

But is this the darkest days of the Oilers franchise?
Please. Not even close. I remember going to games in junior high when the
building was 1/3 full and a graphic of the Oilers logo with a For Sale sign led
the Sports Desk (remember that? Lol) broadcast every night. I remember losing
every good player in the offseason in the late 90s and early 00s, watching Doug
Weights head off into the night and feeling like the poorest kid on the poorest
block of #firstworldproblemsland

No, this current era is only maybe top 3 dark periods in a
franchise strangely plagued by bad mojo, despite whatever lineup it ices on a
year to year basis being the Kings of the City forever and ever amen. The
Hockey Gods clearly blessed the Oilers early in their franchise, beyond what
anyone could expect for success. 

And it appears we are still paying for that
burst of glory with years of dark, dark, darkness. I hope you enjoyed it party
of people of Edmonton in the 1980s. I would give my left big toe for just one
playoff game slash after party slash pool party slash “listening to music
upstairs” slash baptism 10 months later.

I can recall way darker times as craptacular as things are
going right now. The last two times I have cried in my life was Grade 6 for
reasons I no longer remember and post SCF06G7. I dissolved into drunken sobs so
pitiful after those three wonderous months of playoff hockey and cried my way
through a packed house party that went long into the morning hours after the
game ended and the wrong team won the Cup.

I cried so hard and for so long that my girlfriend at the
time broke up with me at said party saying “she wouldn’t be seen with anyone
who was such an emotional mess from just hockey.” The night the Oilers lost the
Cup. It didn’t even register as an event in my emotional state. I can’t even
remember her name anymore**

So yeah the Oilers are disappointing beyond words. They are
on the verge of ruining the careers of one or more of their superstars. It’s
only a matter of time until one of them requests a trade to get out of here and
the City really explodes in rage. 

No one from within the room or the adjoining building
appears to be willing or able to solve the problem. I’m also pretty sure Kevin
Lowe broke into my email and started sending out spam emails. Everything is on
fire and everything sucks.

But I don’t seem to be crying. So things have been worse.

Go easier on Daryl Katz. He could be Peter Pocklington.