Yikes. A 0-3 start and it is the afternoon after a 4-2 defeat to an old arch nemesis in the guise of the Dallas Stars. All is not well in the City of Champions. A summer which started off with so much promise is entering fall where fans already fearing the worst. Added together, a new GM, coach, goalies, and another shiny first overall pick= same result. Fans are getting their pitchforks out from the shed and starting to sharpen the tines.
Hall is a bandaid and a whiner. Sekera is not as good as Petry. Schultz will Jultz. Yakupov has to bury his chances if he expects to stay on a line with McDavid. Chiarelli is a brutal GM and hasn’t delivered on the backend. We should have traded down and drafted Eichel. Todd McLellan is making questionable roster decisions and isn’t a good coach. Why wasn’t Reinhart in the lineup instead of Davidson? Mark Fayne is overpaid and can’t make a pass. Etc, etc, etc.
The above paragraph is a paraphrased sampling of what I’ve both read and heard other fans state on various platforms over the past 48 hours. Some were from the Oilers pre-game show on the Team 1260 yesterday. Some were from the comments section on Oilers Nation. The rest were found on my Twitter timeline during last night’s game.
I have to admit, I’m not innocent myself as I sent out a few negative tweets last night(@oilersaddict):
Being a fan is rooted in emotion. It is to be expected that the negative emotions one experiences while watching their team flounder around like a recently caught fish on the floor of a boat will spill out through a real-time application like Twitter. However, is the extreme negativity warranted so early in the season? Teams, even good ones, go through losing streaks; they are part of life and professional sports. The Oilers have started 0-3, but there did appear to be some good structural signs in the first two games. I also remember both reading and hearing that the Oilers had a tough schedule to start the year, so it isn’t as though their start was entirely unexpected.
Did anyone actually expect the Oilers to contend?
Rather than try and draw a conclusion, I’ve started doing something different as ultimately my opinion doesn’t mean squat. Over at Oilers Addict, I have been posting a series of polls to gauge what other fans think about a variety of topics. Dave (@RustyKnuckler) asked if I would start posting some polls over here at the Oilers Rig. I said sure, so here is my first poll question (if one of the responses doesn’t suit you, put your take in the comments below):
[polldaddy poll=9127042]
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