As I sat watching the Oilers game, I ran through possible story ideas and they seemed to get more and more negative as time ticked away in the game. It felt like déjà vu, in a sense. There was a lack of desperation by the Oilers until the final moments of the game, but how could this be?
We were supposed to run 32-year-old Jeff Glass out of the net and parade home with two points. At least, that’s the way my mind laid it out for me on Twitter after Mark Spector sent out the tweet about the starting goalie.
Needless to say, things didn’t exactly go as I had planned.

It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t bad

Don’t get me wrong the game was still okay, it wasn’t anything like some of those games during the decade of darkness, and it had a great finish. Strome easily should’ve had a couple goals, the puck luck wasn’t in his favour or he passed up open nets, but he’s really starting to find his game. Big marks go to Nuge* and Puljujarvi who were both exciting to watch nearly all night long. And there were others that made some plays and tried to get things done. However, when you’re blessed with a team down on their luck as the Blackhawks were, you need to find a way to capitalize and that’s not what happened.
*Nuge has a big asterisk for a few bad giveaways, including on the power play.

Putting up shots, but they’re not going in

How is it that the Oilers can put up 45 shots and only manage three goals?! Don’t forget, two of those came in the final few moments while Talbot was pulled and the adrenaline was pumping. One thing I’ve noticed is that there’s no real “Ryan Smyth” kind of guy on the team that will do whatever it takes to score a goal. Someone needs to step up and stand in front of the opposing team’s goalie and put in those garbage goals. As a result, the goalie had a clear view of the shot more often than not.
Period
EV
PP
SH
TOT
1
0-17
1-2
–
1-19
2
0-9
0-3
–
0-12
3
2-14
–
–
2-14
OT
–
–
–
–
TOT
2-40
1-5
–
3-45

Where do we go from here?

I figured I could write something here about how I’m still sipping the Oilers Kool-Aid and have hopes for the postseason. Then I decided to make it fun, fire out this tweet, and poll the Nation:
It’s Oilersnation after all, so I’m going to let the fans fill in this one. There was a common theme:
There were some logical ones:
Lastly, there was a few bang on ones:
I agree with Shelby, we should all get some ice cream and go up from here. Where do you think we’re going to go from here? Let me know in the comments below.