Oilers Hockey

Some of my earliest memories are of listening to Oilers games broadcast on 630 CHED, and watching Oilers games with dad in our old house. I couldn't have been older than four, and I didn't really follow what was going on, but I very clearly remember cheering for the Oilers. I remember dad telling me that the Oilers weren't a very good team, but that they used to be the best team in the world. I remember him telling me about Wayne Gretzky, the greatest hockey player ever, and how he used to play for the Oilers. The Oilers won their last Stanley Cup a month before I was born.

I remember him teaching me about the current Oilers. Doug Weight, the best player on the team. Todd Marchant, the fastest skater. Curtis Joseph, the best goalie. Mike Grier, hardest hitter. Ryan Smyth, the hardest worker.

Dad's favorite players were always the hardest workers. He used to take me to a couple games a year, back when tickets were cheaper. He would take me down to ice level during the warmups and point out which players were hard workers. I specifically remember him beaking Rem Murray for being lazy. These days, he's a fan of Shawn Horcoff, not of Dustin Penner.

I grew up through the 90's and early 2000's, watching the Oilers try to compete with large-market teams. In those days, there was no salary cap, and the Oilers couldn't afford to resign their best players. Teams like Colorado, Detroit, and Dallas could always spend more money on good players, so they were always better than the Oilers. It wasn't fair, and I felt a monstrous sense of injustice. Dad said that meant the only thing the Oilers could do was make sure they were the hardest working team. If they worked ten times as hard as the rich teams, they could beat all of them.

I remember the Oilers usually barely making the playoffs, battling hard, and usually losing the series to Dallas or Colorado. One time they actually beat Dallas, and I was so proud of them! They promptly lost to Colorado in the second round, but Dad had been proven right: if the Oilers work ten times as hard as the rich team, they can win.

It was hard cheering for the underdog team. Other kids cheered for Colorado, because they had Joe Sakic and Peter Forsberg. This was blasphemous to me. I almost punched a kid on my hockey team for saying Peter Forsberg was the best player ever, not Wayne Gretzky. I knew that just because the Oilers weren't very good was no reason to cheer for one of those evil rich teams.

The games were always exciting to watch. Since the Oilers' only chance to win was to outwork the other team, that's what they had to do. They had no choice but to skate harder, bodycheck harder, and fight harder than the other team. That was my team. That is the team I cheered for.

In 2005, the new NHL collective bargaining agreement put a salary cap in place for the NHL. That meant the Oilers could afford good players. It didn't really hit home for me until I heard the Oilers had traded for Chris Pronger and Mike Peca. This was absolutely earth shattering. I remember where I was when I heard it; sitting in the car in a Future Shop parking lot waiting for Dad to get something. Chis Pronger represented everything the Oilers couldn't have before. I thought wow, if the Oilers have players like Mike Peca and Chris Pronger AND work harder than every other team, they could win the Stanley Cup!

We all know how that turned out. The playoff run was amazing while it lasted. It brought people together. I was never prouder of my team. Chris Pronger the superstar. Dwayne Roloson the goalie. Ales Hemsky the kid phenom. Ryan Smyth the heart and soul. Georges Laraque the unbeatable fighter. Fernando Pisani the unlikely hero. That was Oilers hockey. That was a sublime display of what it is I love about hockey.

Ever since, it hasn't been the same. The Oilers aren't the same as the Oilers I grew up cheering for. Of course the players are different, but the team's identity is gone too. The playing field is now level, but they lose even more than before. They don't work hard like they used to. I follow the team more closely than ever, but I can't cheer for them like before, because they don't work like they used to. They have a better chance to win any given game, but they lose more of them, and don't even go down swinging. Before, they had a good reason to lose, but they won anyway. Now, they have every reason to win, but they lose anyway. The hockey they play is not the Oilers hockey I remember, not the Oilers hockey I was raised on. There have been some fun moments, but I haven't seen that hockey since 2006.

The other night though, I got a glimpse. The Oilers, with half their lineup injured for the rest of the season, came up against their provincial rivals the Calgary Flames, with a chance to officially eliminate them from playoff contention. A last-place team with nothing to lose, up against impossible odds. Their only chance: to work 10 times harder than the other team. The Oilers were up 4-1, and lost 5-4 in a shootout, but I haven't been so proud of my team in literally five years. I really did feel like I was watching playoff hockey, Oilers hockey.

It's almost like I'm afraid to stop "following" the Oilers and start "cheering" for them again. If the game against the Flames is any indication, I might be able to do that before too long. The Oilers can lose 90% of their games for the rest of my life, as long as they play like that. Then I can cheer for my team again.

Yes, I'm an Oilers fan. Are you?

Restless Heart Syndrome

"Electric Campfires"

It so happens I’m tired of lingering darkness,

Of the brazen anthems that drag me into consciousness,

Of the half-hearted sprinkle that precariously secures me there.

I’m tired of lukewarm milk and dusty toast,

Of the yellowed spatula and crusty dishcloth.

I’m tired of the obstinate climate and its insistence on cold.

I want an intimate relationship with the sun.

I want electric campfires, and gently pulled hair.

I want sparkling spray, leaping from green lake water.

I want summer back.

I wrote that poem for a creative writing class in the darkest depths of January 2010. I was absolutely sick and tired of waking up at 6am into pitch blackness, getting some food into me, and going off to try and survive the day at Grant MacEwan. I was tired of my room, my commute, my classes, my cooking, and my neighborhood.

It wasn't that I hated school, and the life structure it demanded. I actually liked it, and enjoyed it a lot, for a time. But I got tired of it. Maybe it was the winter blues, maybe it was boredom, probably a combination of both plus other things too. I think the perfect word to describe what happened was that I got restless. I desperately needed to shake things up, make some changes to break up the monotony. The upcoming summer at home seemed the perfect respite, and it was once it finally arrived.

But after a time of summer, I got restless again. I was sick and tired of my job that I'd at least modestly enjoyed for the previous few months. I was tired of my family, my house, my coworkers, and my town. Just like school, I like all of these things a lot. But I'd settled into a routine and I couldn't wait to get away to King's in the fall.

Predictably, it's happened again. I'm tired of winter at King's. I'm tired of my residence, my roommate, my classes, my cafeteria diet, even the campus itself. Again, I like these things a lot, probably more than their home or MacEwan counterparts. But I'm restless, and I need to shake things up again. I need to break up my routine, so badly. The slowly lengthening days tease me with their promise of electric campfires and gently pulled hair, of sparkling spray leaping from green lake water.

These are my dreams, feeble as they are.

My buddy J-Dubs has given up Facebook until the end of the month, and is having trouble finding constructive ways to utilize her free time. As a result of her craving for online interaction, she seems to have turned to her blogger account. She's cranked out two posts in two days, and somehow finds this to be enough moral high ground to chastise me for not posting since January. Well J-Dubs, maybe you're right. Here's a post just for you, written in your trademark rambling style, interspersed with pictures :)

(Good thing I'm a hockey player)

Last night was an interesting night. I spent the evening studying for a biology midterm that I will write in about 3 hours' time. Despite my classmates freaking out over it, I was pleasantly surprised to find that I had relatively little difficultywith the material on the study guide. If the last bio midterm was an 8 for difficulty, this one seems to be a 6. I had trouble motivating myself to read through all theslides.

Since biology seemed so easy, and here's crossing my fingers it actually is, I wrapped up studying by 11:30 and went on the internets. I facebook chatted, read Mendel's Soup (my nightly tradition), caught up on all the Oilers blogs, and so on. At around 12:30, I was wound down enough to sleep, and so returned my macbook to my desk.

There, on the edge of my desk, sat my DS with Pokemon Black version. "No", I thought. "No way. If you pick that up now, you won't put it down until sunrise..."

What was probably two to three hours later, I put it down. I didn't dare look at the clock, because I thought maybe I could trick myself into thinking I went to bed at a reasonable time. One little problem: I wasn't tired anymore. It was too hot in the room. Too much light. I was thirsty. My pillow didn't feel right. Etc. etc.

I thought back to the nap I'd taken that afternoon. Why is it that at night, I can only fall asleep on my side, but usually wake up in the morning on my back? In the daytime, it feels much better to fall asleep on my back, but I can't say I've ever slept from morning til night. I tried laying on my back, and it worked! Probably because it was so close to morning by that time.

I dreamt I was back in highschool, playing basketball. For those of you who don't know, I was never very good at basketball, and spent a lot of time on the bench. In this game, we were playing a team full of super tall black guys, and we only had 6 players, one of which was a fat kid who was even worse than me. So there I was, playing defense against these massive black guys who were all at least a head taller than me. But I remember somehow, in dreamland, I was all of a sudden really good at defense. The score was tied with a minute to go, and a timeout was called.

I said something about how we're only at this point because of improbably good defense, so lets hang on and keep it respectable, and hope for a lucky break. The fat kid, however, called me out. He went into some kind of inspiring Braveheart speech about how if I wasn't willing to always give it everything I had, play to win, and go for what I wanted, I didn't deserve to be on the court. It really was inspiring, I wish I could remember it better. I agreed, and asked to coach to take me off and put the fat kid on. He got dunked on, and we lost the game.

I feel like the dream was trying to teach me a lesson. After being at an all-time high in confidence in first semester, it's been going downhill this term. The last few weeks have brought on a sort of mini confidence crisis, and I've noticed myself unwilling to take chances that only months ago I was making a point never to pass up. I think the dream was telling me I'm capable of more than I give myself credit for, and if I don't go for it, someone else will. That unfortunately doesn't explain the fat kid's epic fail, but you've got to accentuate the positive ;) Any theories, english majors?

I slept through my first class, but its ok because it was a review period for biology, which I am totally going to own this afternoon. I had better.

How's that J-Dubs? Awesome? I thought so.