Anyone Else Over The Edmonton Oilers Preseason Games?
The Edmonton Oilers are 5/8 of the way through their preseason and I am already over watching games that don’t really mean anything.
I am sure most people agree with this “take” therefore I wouldn’t go as far to say this is a “hot take”. At first, I was excited to watch some NHL-calibre players with an Edmonton Oilers jersey on their back. Now I just want this over with.
I am going to start by saying, yes I do watch all these games still even though they mean nothing. Why? Cause I need to see how the boys are looking going into the season. Recently though, watching these games have become mind-numbing.
Not only do I know these games mean nothing, but clearly so do the Edmonton Oilers players. The worst part is you can’t really blame them for only playing at 50% of their ability.
This Edmonton Oilers Roster Is Pretty Much Locked In
Going into the training camp and preseason, there were maybe 2 roster spots up for grabs. 4th line center and #6 defenseman. The 4th line center is now pretty much wrapped up for Lane Pederson since Brandon Sutter announced his retirement.
As for the #6 defenseman, both Broberg and Vincent Desharnais are going to make the NHL squad. The big difference is which one will play when Jay Woodcroft decides to dress 12 and 6, but we know he will fire out 11 and 7 quite a bit.
Let’s All Agree It Is A Cash Grab
The bottom line is that this preseason the Edmonton Oilers really only needed to play a max 5 games to determine these two roster spots. So why are they playing 8 games? The obvious answer is the owners want to sell more tickets.
This becomes even more evident when you compare the home versus away rosters the Edmonton Oilers send out. The away rosters are full of non-NHL players, while the home games are the games where McDavid and Draisaitl are playing.
Why is that? Because the Edmonton Oilers want more fans to come and watch the games at the arena when they are at home. More butts in seats means more money. There is the “they don’t want their players to travel” line that we get, but then with only a few games left the stars are going to need to travel.
As fun as this rant has been, we all know tonight at 8 PM I am going to log into Oilers+ and stream a subpar hockey game that doesn’t mean anything. The only positive is a chance that I will get to see a bunch of ex-Oilers on the Seattle Kraken.