I watched that piece with Spector and that idiot Principe who can't wait to get out his costumes and continue his career of stupid and unfunny, and I flashed back to My Cousin Vinny, when Vinny was talking about the prosecution's case, and I realized how it really linked to the Oilers. So modified for the Oilers
Vinny Gambini: Look, maybe the Oilers had this amazing preseason. Rattie leading the league, McDavid shooting the lights out, Talbot playing 10 feet tall and 40 feet wide, okay? I admit it. But what's most important is winning in the regular season and possibly they could be ok, but I doubt it. Let me tell you why, okay? The GM's got to build a team that the home town fans put their faith in blindly. Building a team is like building a house. Each piece is just another building block. He wants to make a brick bunker of a building. He wants to use serious, solid-looking bricks, like, like these, right?
[puts his hand on the wall]
Bill: Right.
Vinny Gambini: Let me show you something.
[he holds up a playing card, with the face toward Billy]
Vinny Gambini: He's going to show you the the bricks. He'll show you they got straight sides. He'll show you how they got the right shape. He'll show them to you in a very special way, so that they appear to have everything a brick should have. But there's one thing he's not gonna show you.
[turns the card, so that its edge is toward Billy]
Vinny Gambini: When you look at the bricks from the right angle, they're as thin as this playing card. His whole team is an illusion, a magic trick. It has to be an illusion, 'cause they stink. Nobody - I mean nobody - pulls the wool over the eyes of a Gambini, especially this one. Give it the first 20 games and they'll fall apart, their lack of depth and haphazard lineup dictates that.
Look chances are that this is going to be a one line team, maybe Klefbom bounces back and they get a decent 3 out of 6 blueliners, and maybe Cam Talbot bounces back and posts a .929 svpct and Rattie has a 25% shooting percentage, but it won't matter much, because goalies fail. If other teams outmatch 3 out of the 4 Oiler lines and outmatch their bottom 2 pairings on a nightly basis the Oilers will lose.
Do we believe that the top line of the Oilers is going to score 2 goals a game or about 164 goals? Unlikley, If Rattie gets 20 or even 25, which I can't see, Nuge has a career year of 25 and Connor jumps up his best season goal scoring wise of 50 goals or a 20% increase, that's going to be 100 goals at most. Unless Draisaitl scores 50, and Lucic bounces back to 25 and Poolparty gets 25 that team is going nowhere.
They have no real second or third or fourth line scoring option to take the weight off of that first line.
You look at all of the other pacific teams except for maybe Vancouver and they have some semblance of scoring depth that the pathetic trash pile up north dosen't have.
Oiler fans seem to think that somehow everything is going to fix itself.
Oh the PP is going to be great.
The PK is going to bounce back
Lucic is going to bounce back
Talbot is going to bounce back.
Klefbom is going to bounce back
etc etc etc.
They can believe that, but any intelligent, rational fan base is going to tell you that hockey doesn't work like that, that not everything bounces back, and even if they do its like the kid with his finger in the hole in the damn, you might plug one or two or three holes, but then new leaks form.
Its great that they replaced their assistant coaches, even though we know what GG brings to the table, but the coaching problem with the Oilers is still the head coach who couldn't get a good effort out of a crappy team that should have been motivated last year. Instead at the halfway point that team cashed in their last chip at the table, pushed their chair back, walked out of the casino, found the nearest bridge and jumped off.
At the very best scenario, this first 20 game segment for the Oilers kills them. On the other hand I can see them replicated that Flames team years ago with Turek in goal that ripped up the league for 20 games at the start of the season, then their lack of depth and skill through their lineup and teams figuring them out will murder them over the last 60 games.
I mean I know Spector is a completely blind homer who is a terrible writer and an even worse hockey mind is predicting great things. But you would think that even someone with a half formed brain would say "Woah pump the breaks maannnnn, we've been here before and we don't know how good we are"
But this is what makes Oilers hockey so delicious. They give their fan base hope, and then throw them off the cliff to be dashed on the rocks below.
for the Oilers hope might spring external, but the fact of the matter is this. We're not talking about some geyser of awesomeness in terms of how good they are. Its more like the inconsistent stream or an 80 year old man with serious prostate trouble.
Not even fantasy can save the Oilers
No one can.