Game Thread: Oilers vs Rangers - Honouring Sather

Tonight the Oilers honour Glen Sather, a man who played for the Oilers, was the team's captain for a season, coached the team for more than a decade, and was the team's general manager for 20 years. Oh yeah, and somewhere in there put together a team that won five Stanley Cups in seven seasons. Glen Sather's impact on the history of the Oilers is nearly impossible to measure, especially for someone like myself who was 11 years old when the Oilers won the fifth Stanley Cup in 1990, so I'm not even going to try. Whether you were around for the glory years or not though, it's obvious that honouring the architect of the franchise's high water mark is long overdue.

Tonight isn't just about a ceremony though, there is a game to play as well. The Oilers have won four straight games and are looking to go a perfect five for five on their current home stand. I'm sure that winning five games in a row is something that was done regularly in the 1980s, but with the Oilers of the last ten years winning streaks of any kind have been few and far between. And in this stretch, with games against the Bruins, Stars, Sabres, and Sharks, a winning streak was anything but expected. But here we are with the Oilers looking for a fifth straight win, and a sixth in a row on home ice, with a number of ex-Oilers for whom winning five in a row was a normal thing watching from the stands.