-={ Puttin’ On The Foil Presents… }=- AT 26-36-8 Record 23-39-9 Location: Rexall Place Date: March 19, 2011 @ 8:00 PM MST TV:CBC

PRE-GAME RANT

Some are calling this the Basement Bowl… others the Toilet Bowl. Call it what you will, it’s two teams that have struggled immensely. The Avalanche have had a serious meltdown in the last month. The most recent standings I could check while Steve-O was still saving them and the Avalanche were a decent team was January 19th, and the Avs were sitting in 7th place in the West. This actually looks to be the meltdown point anyways, as I had a look and they’ve gone 2-21-3 since then!!! Yikes. That’s disgustingly bad. That’s reminiscent of that one January we hadn’t had a single win. But even the Oilers did better than that. I don’t think they’ve had such an awful stretch in such a short period of time. Talk about a disaster.

Now the Avalanche are contending with us for the 30th position in the league. They haven’t had a win in their last 10 games, and two of those losses came at the hand of the Oilers by a score of 5-1. This is one we can win. It will pull things tighter in the standings, but I know the players don’t want to finish 30th. They’ll do what they can to win this one.

Prediction: 4-2 Oilers

VERY GUESSTIMATED LINES

Continue reading 'GDT Oilers 2, Avalanche 3 (SO) – Game 72 – 2011-03-19 @ 8:00 PM MST – CBC'»

-={ Puttin’ On The Foil Presents… }=- AT 37-23-11 Record 23-38-9 Location: Rexall Place Date: March 17, 2011 @ 7:00 PM MST TV:SNETW

PRE-GAME RANT

The picture above is of Chris Vande Velde, who makes his official NHL debut tonight. He was called up, along with centre Ryan O’Marra and winger Alex Giroux. Also previously called up was Teemu Hartikainen, who will also make his NHL debut tonight. By my count, Vande Velde and Hartikainen join a list that is now 8 7 players long of players who have made their NHL debut with the Oilers this year: Jeff Petry, Magnus Paajarvi, Taylor Hall, Linus Omark, Jordan Eberle, Shawn Belle, (snipped Belle because he actually played a few games in Minny and Montreal) Vande Velde, and Hartikainen. That also makes 11 different players that the Oilers have called up from the Barons (8 of them currently sitting on the Oilers team). Trogdor also reminds me that several ladies made their NHL debut with the Oilers this year as well: Octane.

I would not expect a pretty one, but it will be nice to get a closer look at Teemu Hartikainen, who has played quite well for the Barons this year. Chris Vande Velde has had his struggles, although his focus has been on the defensive aspects of his game. It will be good to get a close look at him too.

So now with these 3 call ups, the Oilers have an average of a shade over ONE whole full season played per player on their forward group (just over 2.5 for all skaters). Yikes. Sounds like Theo Peckham is close to a return, at least.

On to the fun stuff… the Coyotes are a mere 4-4-2 in their last 10, however 3 of those 4 wins came all in a row recently, as they’re on a 3-game winning streak. The Oilers are 4-5-1 in their last 10, looking at times like a team that wants to compete hard on one night, and a team that has no place in the NHL (mainly because it’s composed of AHLers) on other nights. We’ll see which one we get to watch tonight!

With any luck, this will also be the last time the Oilers ever play the Phoenix Coyotes (sorry Phoenixonians… Phoenixites… Phoenixers… whatever).

Prediction: 4-0 Coyotes

VERY GUESSTIMATED LINES

Continue reading 'GDT Oilers 1, Coyotes 3 – Game 71 – 2011-03-17 @ 7:00 PM MST – SNETW'»

OK, so after heavy persuasion from Steve-O and Trogdor who are dirt poor (as am I), we finally decided to bite the bullet and start phase #1 of begging you suckers for money. OK, I’m kidding of course. But there is a new shop link in the menu bar now.

If you guys are looking for any gear off the NHL.com shop, give your brothers at the Foil a reach-around and search it up on our shop site, and then make the purchase. If you purchase an item with our affiliate id in the URL (i.e. just simply click the item link from our shop, to save from figuring it out the difficult way), we will earn a massive amount of coin which will allow Steve-O to upgrade his car from a Saturn to a Lamborghini Diablo. In all seriousness (yes I was actually attempting to be funny there), any money we earn will go back into hosting fees which are unfortunately not too cheap at this point now. We’re not looking to mooch money or anything… just taking advantage (that maybe came out wrong) of anyone who might already be looking for some gear from the NHL.com shop.

Let me know if you have any questions on it.

Update: You’ll start seeing it in the next day or two, but we are adding some advertising to help cover the cost of hosting this beast. We are becoming an affiliate of the NHL online shop, and anything bought from the NHL site using our link will help us out. Its the official NHL shop so its pretty legit.

Anyways…

In Oilers news Brule and Horcoff are hurt, and Hemsky is out for the season. Did we cover Gagner last week? Apparently JFJ is out too (as per Racki) but I don’t think that’s important at all. Holy crap. I think the hockey gods are pissing on us now. Either that or they are sending out the injuries so in 5 years when we look back we will say “Well they did have to deal with a lot of injuries” and it won’t look as bad.

In other league news the GM meetings are ongoing right now, and looks like they are looking at how they deal with concussions and fixing rinks that suck, like Montreal, not that their owner has anything to say about unsafe rinks.

Kesler apparently is quite the photo-bomber. I still hate him for being a prick, but this is funny. Douchebag.

Every goddamn hockey news item is still about the Chara hit. OK, I get it…you all don’t like it. I still think it wasn’t as bad as everyone makes it out to be.

And in other news in general, crazy earthquake/tsunami/nuclear meltdown/volcano/Godzilla shit going down in Japan right now…seriously, sucks to be them and here’s hoping shit gets good real quick.

Continue reading 'Monday Morning Standings'»

The Edmonton Journal had an article yesterday suggesting the Oilers should take a stab at signing Shea Weber to an offersheet. I don’t have to go on about it since we all know the story, but the Oilers became famous in the post-2005 CBA world for offersheets by signing Thomas Vanek to an offer sheet. When the Sabres matched, the Oilers eventually went after Dustin Penner, and successfully signed him when the Ducks decided not to match the contract.

So here are the biggest names available in this year’s RFA pool (assuming these players aren’t offered extensions before July 1st) that the Oilers could choose to target:

Shea Weber (D) – Nashville Predators
Steven Stamkos (C) – Tampa Bay Lightning
Drew Doughty (D) – Los angeles Kings

So could the Oilers sign any of these guys? Continue reading 'RFA offersheet opportunities'»