Quote:
Originally Posted by oilyfan
Flames fans can be a bit much though [emoji6]
So let's see, the Oilers have been at the bottom of the league for ten years (because of self inflicted reasons). Flames fans chucking all the way through, making fun of Oilers fans for still believing. In the meantime talking up the Flames every season, who lets be clear have not had a great run themselves the last few years. Now the Oilers are having a good season and all we hear is - soft season, back to backs, one line, league is favouring the Oilers and so on. Do the math.
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I appreciate the candour and the fact that many frequent Oiler-fan visitors here are well-spoken and reasonable, but I don't think you accurately address the crux of most Flames' fans current Oiler-aimed vitriol. This season goes WAY beyond stoking even the most traditional Oiler-hate fires for most of us...imo here's why:
Since 2007, the Oilers have drafted in the top ten nine (!!) times. Up to 2015, this included three times at the first overall spot.
Over seven seasons (2007-14), with all those picks, with all the potential young talent, the Oilers continued to suck, and suck hard. Indeed, they truly WERE the suckiest bunch of sucks who ever sucked. (I'd expand further on this but some stupid wiener kids are listening).
As you say, these wounds were "self-inflicted" and the Oilers devised no coherent strategy to sort it out. Damn right, we laughed at this mismanagement--it was hilarious, and a source of comfort when we Flames fans had trouble sleeping.
The point is that the oilers' incompetence gifted them opportunity after opportunity to improve quickly, and they just kept wasting everything handed to them. They didn't deserve to keep getting these chances, but they did. And they kept wasting them.
It took one final (TBD?) bit of extreme fortune in the 2015 draft for the Oilers to be rescued from their perennial outhouse. For one to suggest (not saying that you did in your post) that this year's "good season" would be occurring WITHOUT McDavid is simply delusional. The Oilers were NOT "trending upward" in player development, or league success prior to McDavid's arrival. At best, they were hovering around the same level of mediocrity in the standings from season to season. The once-again unearned arrival of ONE ("generational") PLAYER changed it all.
(...This, after the unearned arrivals of 8 total previous top ten picks--3 of which were also first overall--were employed in such fashions as to do nothing to improve the team's lot in life.)
During this same stretch, the Flames drafted in the top ten exactly three times. You say that flames fans spent all these years "talking up the flames every season". I don't know which flames fans you interact with, but this particular board was pretty reasonable about the Flames during those years. Unless you're condemning a Flames message board for going fan-crazy from time to time...that I can't dignify with a response...
Most of us grew pretty frustrated with the lack of draft pick development, the underachieving in playoffs, the acquisition of aging player after aging player, the coaching-hire wheel, the perrenial "race to 9th place" and the length of time ownership spent hanging onto Iginla and crew instead of admitting the need for a rebuild. The flames sucked too, but for different reasons than the Oilers, and not for nearly as long.
Even still, the flames were simply better than the Oilers through all those seasons; better in the standings and better in the head-to-head games. So, if stating facts annoyed Oiler fans during that time, then I don't know what to tell you. But you cannot imply that by "talking up the Flames" we collectively believed our team was anything more than it turned out to be, over the "last few seasons". In many ways, the only source of joy we cherished as fans was the knowledge that the flames were better than the Oilers, and that the Oilers sucked.
Nevertheless, once the Flames finally began their rebuild, they started to make changes to their organizational structure that showed movement in the right direction. They even made the playoffs unexpectedly, and then fired their "coach of the year" after missing the next year. It's been clear that the Flames are committed to a completely new approach to team success than was employed during the Sutter era. And they're doing it with far fewer resources than were gifted to the Oilers.
Sure, the Oilers seem to be making some steps in management and structure as well. Yet all the Architects of No Good remain in the franchise, giving one pause as to whether or not things have REALLY changed in Nogoodistan. But fundamentally, it's been the fluke receipt of one player that has changed the Oilers' trajectory. This one event has offset ten years of entrenched incompetence.
Having said all this, it's true: the Oilers are having a good season and McDavid is unreal. But the Flame-fan complaints you list above (back-to-backs etc) are just recent additions to the key reason for Flame fan dismissal of the Oilers: these things are extensions of the same undeserved luck the Oilers have possessed for the past decade.
Predominantly, it is this luck that (I'd wager) Flames fans are mostly riled by, coupled with Oiler fan belief that somehow the Oilers are responsible for their top players' (particularly McDavid's) development. (If anything, one would be more tempted to argue that Oiler "development" did more to set-back many of their top-draftees' development, but I'm not making that argument here...just sayin'...)
On top of this, some Oilers fans say they "deserve" this season for "still believing", as you say. But they don't "deserve" anything. If you "believed" in a franchise that deliberately stank for so long, all the while publicly chastising segments of its own fan base, then what you "deserve" is to have perpetual seasons of sucktitude, despair and pestilence. "GIGO" and whatnot...
But through amazingly little historical team-building foundation of their own these past ten years, the Oilers have turned a corner on the back of an undeserved phenom, and are being lauded at every turn for it. So yeah--that's kind of annoying, as a general occurrence. And it's particularly annoying for those of us who cheer for their chief rival. So pardon me if I continue to support the cause of "E = NG" for the foreseeable future.
