Umlauts

Everyone knows that the pre-season means nothing, and that goes double for hockey blogs. But I was at the Joey Moss Cup on Tuesday and broke down and bought a #91 jersey from the Oilers Store, so I feel that I deserve at least some of the credit for Magnus' 4 point night tonight.

And speaking of the JMC, Pääjärvi had an alright game for Team White that night, but it was clearly overshadowed by the Triple-H line's 6 points, and by Joey's heartfelt rendition of O Canada. This time, with the upper bowl at RX1 no longer curtained off, MPS looked like he had something to prove, and decided to steal the show.

I imagine all the writers up in the press box had their "Taylor's First Pre-Season Game" stories prepped and ready to send off to their editors before the oil derrick had been raised back into the rafters, but no such luck. They'll just have to save those stories for October 7 and use Find/Replace to swap out "Tampa Bay" with "Calgary" and "pre" with "very long regular".

To be fair, Hall looked pretty good too, with his post, his nice break to the net, and his gift of a goal. I think Magnus just wanted to remind everybody that certain rookies on this team can buy beer in every single province. When the dust settled, both players were able to nicely take advantage of Lightning goalie Dan Ellis, who was obviously distracted after having missed the Fantastipotamus singing earlier in the day.

It's still very early days, but it sure is nice to have something, anything, to cheer for again when the Oilers are playing. I had almost forgotten the feeling. Göilers!