Old Age and Treachery

There are two threads to last night's loss to the Red Wings.

The first is best explained by the above.

The Red Wings got away with murder on the ice.  When you're a ref in the corner, looking down behind the net, and right in front of you is 6'4, 220lb Jonathan Ericsson, getting up off Hall after "falling" on him after a check, and that same Ericsson has an arm draped around Hall's neck and his hand is on his face and he is very reluctant to let go despite the puck being 20 feet from Hall... If you're the referee in that situation, I hope to God that you have some sort of explanation when Steve Tambellini calls the league office and shows them the video of that.

The Red Wings set pick plays and they mugged the Oilers.  I don't believe in conspiracy theories or anything like that, though I do believe in human nature.  It could be that the refs made mistakes.  Consistently.  In favor of the Wings.  Given our 5-on-3, I don't quite believe that.  More than likely, the Wings are just a sneaky, treacherous, old team that knows all the tricks in the book and exactly what they can get away with.

The other thread of discussion is the Oilers' seventh consecutive loss.  Yes, it was ugly.  So were, in fact, more than a few losses in this stretch.

But I don't despair.  I'd love to see Tambellini trade the first overall pick for a proven elite defenceman.  I make no secret of that.  I also know, however, how good Stu MacGregor is at his job and that while we have a ton of prospects in the system, few are centres, non project as first line centres, and after Marincin and Petry the defensive pipeline is thin.

In the meantime, despite being down 3-1 at the start of the third, the Oilers fought back yet again.  If not for a flukey goal, this could have gone into overtime, or it could have been 4-3 on the Helm insurance marker (which may or may not have happened if not for the bounce off Smid's skate.)

Bad teams, they don't fight back.  Last year, we had a really bad team.  We've had bad teams since 2006-2007, so we should be familiar with them and see the difference.  The Oilers were soundly thrashed in the first period, as usual, and had a strong third - almost as usual.

They have fight, they have talent, and they're explosive.  You can never count this team out.  All this tells us that they have potential and the times when they do get it all together - rare as those have been lately - this can be a good team.  It would be better with some obvious upgrades (puck-mover for the third pairing, a couple of centres), but even with this roster, if they manage to finish on a good note this season, I'd expect a run at a playoff spot next year.

Patience, grasshopper.