[GreenLantern2814]

Originally Posted by Jay Random

The Oilers remain a perennial loser because they don't know how to put a team together. For years, they have kept adding to their one area of strength (skilled forwards without much grit, mostly wingers) and ignoring their numerous holes. This summer, MacTavish finally began making a few moves to fill the holes, but they still have a long way to go.

The Flames, sad to say, have been in much the same situation, except that until this past year, they were cobbled together out of a somewhat better grade of odds and ends. They've been weak at centre since 1995, and have lacked depth in goal since Turek left nine years ago. (By the time they finally found a decent backup in MacDonald, their starter was washed up.) For the rest, they kept making reactive moves to shove their holes around the depth chart: not enough scoring, not enough defence, too slow, too small — they've had at least one of those problems every year, and couldn't fix one without creating another. And through it all, they have had a positive genius for hiring coaches and management staff who are poorly suited to work with each other or with the kind of players they had on the roster.

The biggest difference I see between the teams is the bias of their respective fans and media. The media have an inexplicable love affair with the Oilers, and keep peddling the myth that the glory days of the 1980s are somehow destined to return. The same media have a much more understandable, but still irrational, hate on for the Flames, and consistently expect them to be worse than they are. The contrast between expectations and results, year after year, makes the Flames a low-key tragedy and the Oilers an unintentional farce. The Flames are Charlie Brown trying to kick the football; the Oilers are more like Snoopy pretending to be a flying ace.

Sig'd. Well spoken, sir.