Oilers Playoffs 2006: 1 win down, 15 to go

Last night at approximately 12:45am local time, we had a brilliant insight: Lets go buy some beer and drink all night long and stay up to watch the Oilers game! (they cleverly scheduled it for 11am). So we spent $40 on beer, and $50 on deep dish pizza, and were all passed out by 5am. At 10:45 we dutifully woke up to watch the game...sober, as it happened.

Therefore we were all able to actually notice things during Edmonton's 4-2 victory over the Detroit Red Wings to even the series at 1-1. Things like this gem during an interview during the first intermission between Scott Oake and Shaun Horcoff: "So do you think its important to capitalize on those scoring chances?" Tell me you didn't just say that! What was Horcoff supposed to say? "Nah, I really think capitalizing on goal scoring is a trap" Later, watching Kelly Hrudey trying his hand at explaining physics was just embarassing. He almost broke into a verse or two of "the wrist bone's connected to the elbow bone".

As for the game, it was very entertaining. Fewer weird penalty calls this game, though calling Hemsky for the crime of touching another play's body was abnormal. Game one would-be-hero Roloson "merely" put in an above average effort. His first goal allowed was, as Hrudey observed, a violation of Goaltending 101: keep your foot firmly against the post when the puck is behind you. But even the CBC admitted it was an ugly goal...a triple skate bank shot into the net is hard to describe any other way. Detroit's second goal was called ugly too, but the ugly part was the puck bouncing off Roloson's head to sit prone in the middle of the crease as Roloson tried to get up: Zetterburg's sinking it into the net was perfectly fine.

So who was the hero of Game 2? You'd be hard pressed to find a better example than Brad Winchester. "Shotgun" (isn't that a good nickname for him?) had 1 assist in his 19 games during the 2005/2006 season, and in his first ever NHL playoff game manages to get his first NHL goal...and a goal that won his team a crucial game against Hockeytown. Winchester was in the game replacing big Georges Laraque, which in all fairness wasn't such a brilliant move on MacTavish's part....Laraque shouldn't even be a candidate to play in games unless Poullet, Winchester, Schremp, etc. are all unavailable and the entire Oilers lineup is injured. [out of curiosity, if you say "you'd be hard pressed to find a better example than ______" aren't you obliged to tack on another good example? Pronger, for example? -ed]

Meanwhile, the saddest moment of the game for me was the game-tying goal by Fernando Pisani. Sad? Why? Well, because with Legace down and a wide open net, the puck hanging right in front of the crease, Pisani fires a shot that sails into the back of the twine.

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THE GOAL LIGHT DIDN'T GO ON! Pisani, that clever guy he is, sees the puck has bounced back out and is sitting there right in front of him. Ergo, he shoots it back into the net again. Again it bounces out, but this time the red goal light finally hits up as the refs are already indicating a goal from the original shot.

Why sad? Because for a moment it seemed like some perverse Oiler fan nightmare was coming true. Pisani shoots the puck into the net, and it bounces back out without the goal judge or the refs reacting at all. The puck bounces back, and Pisani fires it in again. There's still no goal light as the puck bounces out again, and again Pisani fires it into the net. Shot after shot after shot beats Legace, finds the back of the net, and is thrown back out for Pisani to try and fire it again. It's some sort of sick never-ending hellish twilight zone, with a sentient goal monster spitting the pucks back out. Some may laugh, but I think many will realize the scary truth to it.

Now I'll leave you with one post-game thought, as expressed by both an optimist and a pessimist:

Pessimist: Well, at least now the Oilers won't get swept.
Optimist: Well, at least now the Red Wings won't get swept.