While Lowetide is still a good eight skaters ahead in his series, Reasonable Artspectations is chugging along behind the scenes. If you've been tuned into my twitter feed, you may have seen previews for a bunch of these. Finally got some scans done, so here's the first batch of the update:
*If you don't get this one, do yourself a favour & familiarize yourself with Pat "BDHS" Mclean's Kaptain Horcov
Jones, Jacques & Reddox to follow in Part II. Sharp eyes will notice that I skipped Magnus Paajarvi & Linus Omark, I will post them after the draft as part of a bigger piece.
In an effort to keep pace with the prolific blogger that is LT, most of these are pencilled, inked, and coloured in an hour or so. Previews and roughs will be posted on my twitter (lgwgreen). Scans and finished work will be uploaded here & my flickr whenever I get around to digitizing the damn things.
There's word around the Internet this week that the Oilers are open for business leading up to the draft. Lowetide quoted this piece from the Boston Globe that threw out names like Penner, Gagner, Hemsky, and Cogliano. And an article from Rishaug on TSN.ca on Monday had this tidbit: "Anyone in the organization (with the exception of Eberle) could be in play and available to the highest bidder." With all this trade talk, I'm a bit worried about some of the comments I'm seeing.
Certain Oilers fans are making the argument that the Oilers shouldn't trade this or that young player because only loser organizations suffer through the development years of their players only to trade them when they're hitting their prime. I've seen terms like "NHL's Farm Team" thrown around. The argument that we shouldn't trade players just as they're reaching the productive years of their careers seems to make sense at first, but actually doesn't really hold up.
Sure, loser organizations are usually the same organizations that trade away their talent just as they are getting good. But that's not what makes them losers. What makes them losers is that they don't get full value for those young players when they do trade them. It's one of those causation vs. correlation things.
There's a concept in Economics called Sunk Costs. Basically what it says is that when you're trying to make a decision about the future, it does you no good to worry about what you've already done. If you manufacture a product that costs 10 dollars to make and you break even on every sale, it doesn't really matter that you spent 100 million dollars building the factory. You're still better off cutting bait and putting the rest of your money in the bank. At least there it will earn a little bit of interest. The 100 million is gone, no matter what you do.
In the same way, it doesn't really matter if the team suffered through the "Clouseau-esque" development of some of our young players. Just like the 100 million dollars, we can't get that ice time back. And we shouldn't let that baggage affect our decision-making. (You can make the same manufacturing analogy about vets like Moreau, too. Just swap out "breaks even on every sale" with "takes a significant loss on every sale.")
We can all agree that the team is bad today, but the way to get better is by evaluating the future value of each move, and then pull the trigger on the ones that make sense moving forward, without worrying about what has already happened.
So, I agree that for a player like Sam Gagner, the risk/reward of cashing in his future value for the expected future value of a Hall/Seguin probably doesn't make sense, but it doesn't have anything to do with the growing pains we've already suffered with the player. Gagner has a future value. Hemsky has a future value. Cogliano has a future value. If the Oilers can trade them away and get better future value back, then they should do it. Period. It's the only way we will ever get better.
The 'Nucks are in town and word around the Northwest Division is that it is on. They're missing Sami Salo, we're missing Shelly. They're missing Daniel Sedin, we're missing Ales Hemsky1. So both teams are out their top D-man and their top goal scorer--
Wait. What? Hemmer isn't our top scorer? Well then who is?
Dustin. Penner.
Who woulda thunk it? I'll tell ya who thunk it. Nobody thunk it! Not one person thunk that DP would be our top scorer this year, least of all any schmuck at this blog.
But lo and behold, there he is: tied for 5th in the league in goals (neck-and-neck with certainpeople).
Speaking of surprising point-getters, one Mr. Comrie is looking like a terrific acquisition. Of more concern is that he finally trotted out his arm candy at RX1.
While The Duff seems genuinely pleased for her beau, one cannot help but notice that glint of hardened steel in her tastefully shadowed eyes. What the picture doesn't show is that gaze is leveled at Khabibulin's wife. I'd keep my head up if I were you, devochka, you are on thin ice around these parts.
On the topic of soft er... hands, Comrie's former teammate Georges Laraque is in a bit of trouble himself since the internet was set aflame by this little video:
Oh, Georges. I'm sure the big man had some inkling of what the makers of Octane 7.0 were going to do with the footage of him making an ass of himself amidst scantily-clad Sexoteque employees, but I doubt the poor guy knew he was going to get edited into a Satisfaction/Call On Me ripoff. He released a statement saying as much and, nearly a week later, it seems the world's most terrifying vegan is going to get off with a bit of "Aw shucks" and a tsk-tsk from NHLHQ (as he should, the money went to charity for goodness sake).
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, we have to push the curves of the Octane Girls out of our minds and focus on the hard edge necessary to steal our second divisional win from the claws of Lulu & Company. Here's hoping the injury bug is biting them harder than us.
1Apparently Staios is out with the same flu bug. Wuh-oh.
