Right out of the gates the first thing I want to do is say I hope that everyone had a great Christmas and that it was better than mine. It isn't like I had a bad Christmas, but whenever you need to make a couple trips to the emergency room it knocks the day down a bit. (Everyone is fine by the way) Aside from that I enjoyed my time with my friends and family, and I hope all of you did as well. Now time for some thoughts.
Oilers Christmas Gifts
We all know we shouldn't say it out loud we all know that one of the best parts for Christmas is receiving gifts. Whether it is something as some socks or just like in those TV commercials you get a new car (honestly who buys a car without consulting the person who is getting it, must be nice to have money like that). As an Oilers fan I always get some Oilers stuff from my wife. This year I got an Oilers toque and an away Connor McDavid jersey. On top of that I also got an ornament that has Draisaitl and McDavid as Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly, I will be setting this up at my desk at work because that is something that needs to be seen year-round.
Around The Hockey World
There has been some news coming out of the world of hockey these past few days. The biggest one from Canada is that somehow the Canadian Junior team lost to Latvia. Team Canada, like they are every year, were one of the favorites to win the tournament, while Latvia is just happy to be in there. This is one of the biggest upsets in history, for sure it will be the biggest upset of the tournament, unless Latvia can beat the USA as well. The Canadians did win their next game and they face the USA today in the classic New Years Eve game.
Alex Ovechkin is back playing and on the hunt for Gretzky's record. After suffering a knee injury earlier this season, Ovechkin is back playing and hopefully he can continue scoring at the rate he was because I would love to see him surpass the goal scoring record before he loses his playing ability. In his first two games back, he has scored a goal in each. This puts him at a total of 870, 25 goals behind Gretzky's 894.
Oilers back at home to face Utah Hockey Club
After an embarrassing performance against the Anaheim Ducks on Sunday, the Edmonton Oilers return home tonight to host the Utah Hockey Club. The Oilers need to play pretty much the exact opposite of the game they played on Sunday. There was not many positives from that game against the Ducks. If they play that way against Utah the score will be even worse.
Hopefully the games on that mini road trip were caused by a Christmas hangover and the Oilers are able to hope back into the way they were playing prior to Christmas where they won 8 of their last 9. With last two games the Oilers now find themselves back in 3rd place in the Pacific Division. 2 points back of the Kings and 8 back of the Golden Knights, if the Oilers want to have a chance of winning the Division they need to stop losing to weaker teams, and that needs to start tonight.
As we look forward to a New Year starting tomorrow, I hope that the Oilers can have the same amount of success as they had last year. I just really hope they can win one more game in the playoffs than last season. That is all that I want as an Oilers fan.