OilersNation.com launched November 27, 2007. In the nearly 3 years and two months since that auspicious day, we have seen only a handful of games that meant anything – anything at all. You’d have to look to folk like Mr. Machete here to find someone on a longer dry spell than the Oil – and at least this guy has some size and is able to intimidate.

Watching shitanusly crappy hockey for four straight seasons after a heart pounding ride to the SCF back in 2006 has been a special kind of hell reserved for the good citizens of the OilersNation. Come April, it will have been 5 straight years of importance free hockey and yet our collective attention hasn’t diminshed one bit.

Gregor reports his show has never been busier. OilersNation traffic continues to climb month on month. Attending the game at RX1 against the Stars we couldn’t help but marvel at the number of Hall, Eberle and Paajarvi jerseys sitting in the stands.

Sure Rexall Place is quieter than a Tiger Woods fan club meeting, but Oilers fans are truly second to none in the NHL when you step back and take a look at the big picture.

Who else but Oilers fans would calmly sit through a stretch this inept? Over the past 375 ice hockey matches since the Cup Run the Oil have posted a 152-185-38 record.

They have put up enough bricks to rebuild the Great Wall of China just south of the City limits and have left us all hoping to come back in the next life as one of the 15 remaining Atlanta Thrashers fans on earth.

They have a team that is going places.

Given the state of the squad and the strangely hot New Jersey Devils we would bet our bottom dollar that the Oilers will finish last place in the league for the second year in a row. Sure, this means that EHP will have a new first round friend to play with in the fall but it doesn’t really thrill us about the 7 sets of tickets we have remaining for this season.

We have run out of ways to discuss a last place hockey team after hammering out over 500 articles in the past few seasons. We have absolutely no idea how the rest of the fellas – and the mysterious Amber McCormick – manage to keep coming up with fresh material, but we tip our hats to them for continuing to squeeze blood from a stone.

 

One has to believe that the Gods of Hockey will see fit to grant us a competitive team sooner rather than later. Before this stretch of sterile incompetency it was "small market syndrome" keeping us from success for the better part of a decade. Good players were lacing em up for the Oil on the regular but were forced to depart from our frozen homeland to seek the big money elsewhere.

Fast forward to 2011 and there are no such issues. The Oilers are thankfully able to spend to the Salary Cap in pursuit of victory and play before a packed – albeit silent – house night after night. This financial stability has strangely led to little success on the ice and gillions of dollars being spent on players of dubious quality.

But take back to back first overall draft picks, sprinkle in some other high achieving youngsters, stir in the inevitable free agent signings and we have to imagine that things will be back on track next season.

Because they have to right? RIGHT? NEXT SEASON WILL BE BETTER RIGHT?

 

Screw you next season. We have been cheering for you for five straight seasons. We get particularly excited in the weeks leading up to your start when we somehow convince ourselves that Patrick O’Sullivan is going to single handedly turn the tides or that Erik Cole will put the team over the top.

But we have little choice at this stage of the game – next season it is.

In the spirit of trying to hold on to the shreds of glory that continue to fade into the mist and in the name of trying to get ready for the day that important hockey returns to Edmonton, we have been hard at work with a few of our fellow Nation Scribes to put the finishing touches on a kick ass new part of the Nation.

With the exception of the site originally launching, this is hands down the biggest development in the OilersNation. Even if the Oilers themselves don’t deserve the love and respect they have lavished upon them hourly, Oilers fans deserve everything in the world. In that spirit we will be making an announcement later in the week that we are sure will thrill a great many.

And we will leave it to speculation for a few days to see what people think could be on the horizon. It’s nice to have a pleasant surprise to look forward to – and that is a luxury that has been far too scarce around these parts for far too long.

And we will also put the OilersNation Playoff Site Design away for the fourth straight season.