Edmonton - Columbus post-game: almost

Are the Sestitos the lamest set of brothers in NHL history? It’s like if the Oilers signed Dean Arsene’s brother Claude out of an autobody shop on the Whitemud.

I can’t believe that management hasn’t made a move yet. I love that the entire franchise, not just Kevin Lowe, thinks that the first 30 games are a testing ground.

And for everyone said that I was crazy when I said Moreau should be stripped of the ‘C’, well, I’m glad that he’s doing great things in the community and he’s not embarrassed. He should be embarrassed by his play, but he’s not.

Hey, where’s Benjamin Massey’s posts been lately? During hard Oil times like this, nothing beats Massey’s sardonic sense of humor. Good thoughts overall especially with Souray back.

Massey: get back to work and write some articles!

Just finished watching the game tonight and it was a pretty fun one to watch. Souray shaking his head at Stortini fighting was interesting. Debrusk interpreted it as Souray thinking the Columbus player was in over his head but I’m not so sure it wasn’t directed at Zorg. I didn’t much understand it to be honest.

Visnovsky made some great defensive plays this evening. It’s amazing how much better Smid looks playing with 71 than he does playing with anyone else. I’m convinced that the Oilers could run Visnovsky as a pump-and-dump factory for middling prospects over the next few years. Now, Smid might be better than that but the Oilers decide that, say, Cody Wild isn’t their cup of tea and they’re out of the playoff chase with a couple of months to go, call the kid up, play him with Visnovsky for two months and see what you can get for him at the draft.

I liked the line of Reddox-Brule-Potulny more than I was expecting, especially Reddox (too bad about that penalty in the third period). I did notice one shift where Arsene was out with them and it was two players away from a true Falcons unit. Scary stuff. Or at least, it would seem like it should be but they ended up doing just fine. The one thing that was really annoying was Brule’s shootout attempt. “Deke along the ice” against Mathieu Garon is a dumb choice. I was surprised it came as close as it did to going in the net.

Another guy that sucks at shootouts: Dustin Penner. I remember all of his shootout attempts being both unsuccessful and brutal. But he probably deserves a pass on too much criticism there (Quinn’s choice I’d assume) given his play in every aspect of the game before the skills contest.

I said in the GDT that he shouldn’t have fought because they were already down to 11 forwards – Stortini picking a fight meant they only had 10 for five minutes.

I was going to comment on this in the GDT but it was already the second period by the time I read it. But since you make the point again here, let’s talk about it.

It’s very rare that I am in total disagreement with Derek, but this is one such instance. I agree with the concept if you’re down to 5 defencemen, but c’mon man, even with Stortini and Strudwick (a swing man who lined up at forward right after the first fight and immediately got into another) both in the box, 10 forwards is more than enough to handle five minutes. Even if there are no odd-man situations during that interval, it’s one rotation of 1-2-3-1-2-3-4. If Zorg is still in the box at the end of that time, you doubleshift Hemsky in his spot — something that people were screaming for Craig MacTavish to do last year. It’s no big deal. You have to similar after every fight. There’s more than enough teammates to pick up the guy’s icetime.

While I’m all in favour of Zack playing 82 games, I don’t mind if he misses the odd shift cuz he’s in the box. That’s a huge part of his job. As mentioned in the post-game article up top, last night I thought those two scraps set the tone early, that the Oilers had shown up ready to answer the bell. Hitchcock had dressed a few rowdies, but Stortini took care of Blunden, Strudwick looked after Sestito, and Boll took himself out, with a verbal assist from Souray. I was shocked that Boll wasn’t willing to go, he always struck me as a Stortini-type who would never refuse a challenge, but he let Michael Blunden fight his battle for him last night. And lose it.

When you watch Souray in the clip, he is looking at Boll and shaking his head, presumably saying something like "you’ve got a big mouth, but you don’t step up and back it up. For shame". or somesuch.

“For shame” or some alternate two syllable expression starting with F. I would bet my bottom dollar it was Boll that Souray was talking to. Shaking his head, saying “You don’t want to go with him, and you sure don’t want to go with me.” No way does Sheldon mind Stortini getting into one there, I just don’t see it. But he’s sure going to notice Boll.

Judging from the 2:45 Boll played last night — less than half of what he’s been getting — I would suggest that Ken Hitchcock was none too impressed either.