City of Chumpions

What is that sound high in the air
Murmur of maternal lamentation
Who are those hooded hordes swarming
Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth
Ringed by the flat horizon only
--T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland

It's been a wild couple of days in the NHL and the Oilers have been prominent as always. Unfortunately, prominence is an axe that swings both ways and, by most accounts, the Edmonton Oilers' very public inability to woo or keep any big ticket players (the most recent example being Dany Heatley) has branded the club and, by extension, the city as a post-apocalyptic no man's land where hockey goes to die. We must look quite the fools sending our leprous management team, dressed in crudely patchworked scraps of 1980s power suits, to convince actual hockey players to play for us. Even when we manage to reel in a star, it doesn't take very long for them to grow weary of the daily deathmarch over cracked earth to the mausoleum that is Rexall Place, thrusting up at the sky like a gravestone on these empty plains. Lucky for them, we, the fans, are much too down-trodden and wrapped up in our own self-loathing to notice them leave.

Everyone over at ON seems to be steeping in vitriol over this Heatley fiasco and they are sending out the call that we should pull back our tattered hoods, squint through the clouds of ash and pestilence, and look for the milky white dot that used to be a blazing sun of hope. And we will. We will rekindle that fire in our hearts that gets doused every off-season and we will work ourselves into that all-too-familiar frothing mob of loyal fans (last seen when the Oilers managed to string a pair of wins together). With or without Heatley, we're still lucky enough to have a professional hockey team in Edmonton. A team that bares its intentions for all to see and has the scars to prove it. A team that does not differentiate between desperation and passion. A team, God bless it, that will fly its three top execs to the summer home of a bonafide goal scorer at the 11th hour, just on the off chance they could convince him to end this madness and agree to score those goals for us.

So it didn't work. Yet. So we're all going to have to continue playing the waiting game. For now. So we're the laughing stock of the League. Fuck it. We're the goddamn Oilers and we're gonna do whatever we damn well deem is necessary to grab the bull by its short and curlies and, if we get shaken off, you can bet your ass we'll stand up and try again.

So, gentle readers, we're all in this together. We gotta hang on tight, prepare for anything, and hold onto what is really important in the midst of all this insanity:

Someone better remember to pick up Nikolai at the airport.