NOBODY KNOWS YOU (WHEN YOU’RE DOWN AND OUT)
It is time my friends, to break out the blues. Pour me another rye whiskey. Smiles and blue skies aren’t selling this year, it’s my baby left me and my dog died and my momma only has one shoe. Four games and the summer’s work is ashes. Lordy. Whatever Edmonton gave the hockey Gods for those long ago Stanley’s, our town is paying in full and with tax on the tax.
I’m worried about Dallas Eakins getting any sleep at all. You need sleep you know, to function. I know Eakins is a target of fans but the guy has a very good brain and does innovative things. He isn’t perfect, and sometimes his actions run counter with what we know to be traditional wisdom. I’m all for that, some of my favorite coaches and managers over the years have been that sort. But it has to work or you look ridiculous, and when you’re running a lot of the “outside the lines” experiments at the same time, it can run a little hot when the results aren’t there.
LAST NIGHT’S EV TOI (BLUE)
- Justin Schultz 24:51
- Nikita Nikitin 20:20
- Andrew Ference 15:53
- Darnell Nurse 15:09
- Jeff Petry 12:05
- Mark Fayne 11:48
I believe that’s correct, the NHL is doing this weird thing in 2014-15 where they list PP, PK and total time on ice but not evens so I’m going with this and stand to be corrected. I think you could make a strong case that the No. 5 and 6 men should be at the top, and that Schultz should be at or near the bottom depending on zone starts.
- Rob Vollman, 2014 Hockey Abstract: The Oilers finally addressed their blue line issues this summer. Mark Fayne should be an effective top pairing shutdown defenceman, especially if he’s alongside the highly underrated Jeff Petry. Slovakian rookie Martin Marincin was very promising in his short stint alongside Petry, and could be a legitimate top-four defenceman, as could Nikita Nikitin, if he lives up to the incredible promise he showed in 2011–12 in Columbus. And, assuming he is re-signed, Justin Schultz could nicely fill a Keith Yandle or Torey Krug type of role as a big-minutes but sheltered puck-moving defenceman, a situation in which Andrew Ference might still remain a positive contributor as support. At least one of Oscar Klefbom and Keith Aulie should be a usable depth option.
Vollman points out that Craig MacTavish addressed the blueline, and states that with Petry and Fayne there might be an effective top pairing. I spoke with Rob, and asked him about the idea of an unusual ‘two righty’ defensive pairing, and he had a great point about rarity. Basically the reason we don’t see two righties is they are more rare, whereas two lefties on a pairing doesn’t raise an eyebrow. Either way, the current usage of these men is extremely questionable in my opinion.
And the Martin Marincin item is really curious. Why do the Oilers employ and deploy as they are doing? It’s very strange to me. I’m not going to lash out at Craig MacTavish or Dallas Eakins because they are smart men and know miles more about NHL hockey than I do. However, I would once again point out that when you make unusual moves and they do not work out (and 0-3-1 is by definition not working out) people are going to (correctly) say something.
- Marincin—Petry
- Klefbom—Fayne (because I think Nikitin is not 100%)
- Ference—Schultz
Try that for four games with the Petry and Fayne pairings getting most of the even-strength work and see if you end up 0-3-1. Fair?
THE GOALTENDING
Aaaand we’re back. As with Devan Dubnyk last season, I don’t think Ben Scrivens is a terrible goaltender but he is having a tough start. When Edmonton acquired him last year, he was playing at his confident best and the Oilers had figured out a few things about themselves. This season, Scrivens was behind during camp and hasn’t recovered, and the Oilers (partly due to their long, long audition process during preseason) are still sussing out how the defense works and now we’re four losses into the actual campaign.
- Devan Dubnyk 2013-14 October as an Oiler: 2-5-1 4.01 .878
- Ben Scrivens 2014-15 October as an Oilers: 0-2-0 5.22 .800
The twitter and the verbal is way down on Scrivens, but as with Dubnyk a year ago I’d suggest we take a more patient approach. This is the same guy who set record a year ago with 59 saves in a shutout (most in the expansion era). So hold your muskets at bay, ladies, this guy can play. His NHL SP by year: .903, .913 and .916 a year ago, and given time his save percentage will move back closer to the career number. If you’ve ever seen small sample sizes skew the view in sports, you know this to be true.
You know this to be true. You know this to be true.
THE LONG KNIVES OUT ALREADY?
Adam Proteau has an article up at The Hockey News (here) and it’s worth the read for sure. It’s the longer version of Ray Ferraro’s fantastic and biting “I don’t care what management says anymore” quip on the radio a week or so ago.
Sometimes in life things happen to create a perfect storm, and this is one of those cases. Imagine you’re caught in the wilderness, and winter is coming. Back in the town, they know you’re out there and want to come get you but are ill-equipped with leadership. And the first rescue crew gets lost and aside from sending one guy (Sheldon) out for chocolate they don’t get much done. Now, the second crew gets a late start but they’re making good time (h/t Pat McLean), but you don’t give a rat’s ass it’s cold outside and you’re losing hope. And the wind howls and the cold cuts through your bones and the latest news is not promising.
It kind of reads Donner party, doesn’t it?
WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT THIS TEAM?
Even with the 0-3-1 record the Fenwick close is solid, basically mid-pack. Taylor Hall is a beast. Eakins is deploying his men in a completely reasonable way in terms of zone starts and his 4line is a dream. Arcobello is standing out as a particularly useful player and at this point I’m prepared to suggest the center position has a keeper there. Benoit Pouliot is exactly what this team needed, and please don’t go crazy on the O-zone penalties. See how much he does to calm the waters. Teddy Purcell is a fine player.
WHAT ARE MOVES THE CAN BE DONE TODAY IN ORDER TO HELP
- Recall Martin Marincin.
- Put him on a pairing with Jeff Petry and play the hell out of them at evens.
- Find the best available partner from the remnants to go with Mark Fayne.
- Play the hell out of that pairing at evens.
- Go back to Ben Scrivens Friday night, unless he’s hurt. He’s absolutely the best available option and if the organization loses faith after three games then it’s going to be a long decade in our town.
- Send Leon out.
- Find a veteran center to help this team. Stat.
LOWDOWN WITH LOWETIDE
10 this morning, TSN 1260. We begin the proceedings with Dr. Dennis King, who has scalpel at the ready and insists no one receive any anaesthesia before he operates at 10:05. That’s followed by Corey Graham, who’ll update us on the rollercoaster Oil Kings and their successful (so far) week. At 11, Scott Cullen from TSN’s analytics department goes deep to give us some answers on this Oiler start from Gehenna and at 11:20 I’ll open up the phone lines (yesterday was fun, great calls—one from Ottawa!) and read your texts. At 11:40 it’s Dave Jamieson and by the time he hits the air at noon maybe we’ll have the name of that center.
10-1260 text, @Lowetide_ and it’s going to be interesting.
I would give my right arm to hear a mic’d up Dallas Eakins start his pregame address in Ash’s immortal words.
Incidentally if you want a truly fantastic read, you have to get a copy of Bruce Campbell’s autobiography, “If Chins Could Kill”.
Listened to a little LT this morning, and then to a bit of Stauffer. Stauffer had Serious Gord on, and LT had WG. Stark. Contrast.
wunderbar,
I see what you mean, but I don’t fully agree.
With him being a FA next year, he needs a decent year and get himself a Muzzin type contract or better for a playoff team. If he falters, he’ll end up signing for a non-playoff team.
Haha no kidding. In fairness though, Serious Gord is a frequent caller who calls in on the open line portion. He’s not an invited guest like Kelly Rhudey or Craig Button are on that show, or Woodguy is on LT’s.
Just my two cents on the discussion that I can base on my experience in the real world and how it might translate.
1) Leadership at the Coach and GM levels – In one of my last roles managing employees in an oil and gas company, one of my employees had a pretty severe screw up that affected the budgeting process and the information that we gave to a partner. Instead of laying blame on that employee, I took ownership as the leader and spoke in terms of “we” made a mistake and “we” will fix it. Placing blame on individuals in a team game, or a team environment in my case, creates more harm than good. Unfortunately, as depicted from the posters above the Oilers management and leadership have already made this mistake.
2) Captain selection – Again with reference to my job experiences, I liken a captain selection to a first level manager/supervisor position. Individuals that have been promoted to these positions with the right knowledge and performance are usually well regarded by their staff. Individuals that have been promoted based upon political and/or personal connections are typically not. Unfortunately, the selection for the captain of the Oilers seems to be more based on the personal connection/political aspect as one could argue that other than fitness, Ference really does not excel at anything else related to playing the game of hockey right now.
3) The only bad mistake is the one you never learn from – It seems that the Oilers are hell bent on breaking this rule on an almost daily basis. The rhetoric speaks that they are learning and saying things that suggest they are applying this rule. However, the actions and results display a different conclusion. As many other posters have mentioned, the smartest men in the room syndrome is undermining opportunities to improve this hockey club by actually learning from their mistakes.
icecastles,
Yeah – big difference between invited and ‘go ahead caller’.
Sorry didn’t finish my full thought.
What these issues lead to is really a lack of a true team dynamic and the ability for all of the players to trust in all aspects of the team experience. The players aren’t playing for each other, they aren’t playing for the crest, who knows what they are playing for. I think we saw a small snapshot where Ralph Krueger was able to bring some unity to the team, but it is gone again. Until the Oilers are truly a team that works together and fights together on all levels (like the Flames are showing) they will never have success.
Ferraro : It’s actually quite amazing the early season struggles of the Oilers. I hate talking about the Oilers bc I feel like I’m a broken record. Compounded errors by making the same errors over & over again. If this is what the season looks like in 4 more games they need to get Draisaitl and Nurse back to junior. The LA game was worse than the Arizona game. The biggest issue they face is at no point did it look like the Oilers felt they could win that game against LA. The coach looked like he didn’t have any answers. Was first time I thought they might not be able to stay the course w the coach. I thought last year it seemed like a debacle from the get go in Edmonton. From almost the very first day even taking away the donuts from the writers. His focus was too wide. You can’t change the world need to focus on what’s right in front of you & they had plenty of work in front of them. Now you get to the 2nd year & they should be more comfortable & there should be signs of improvement and there really hasn’t been. Would they be better served with a more experienced coach? They can’t be less served. Here’s the thing, they [Edm] have all kinds of talent, but over the past few years they don’t score a lot of goals either. They [Edmonton] never score 5 on 5. What’s Hall 4 years in? I assume there comes a point where he thinks we’re making progress & then he says we’re the same spot we were in 4 years ago. We saw last year how Frustration burns in that kid [Hall]. He has an engine that constantly churns. I can’t imagine [Hall] wants to sit there & watch the early part of your career waste away [on a team] that can’t show improvement. Their [Edm] model for building the team is clearly flawed. If they can’t see that, I don’t know what they’re looking at. You have to start almost again at what your model is going to be and the model can’t be getting 18/19 year olds into your lineup. MacTavish said in camp they have to find out if RNH & Eberle are great, not good players. The league is different than it was in 1985 you need to be able to defend & counter off your defense. Forwards don’t dominate the game like they did before. There’s too much back pressure. The Oilers have half a dozen forwards who are all the same. They have no variance in their lineup. It’s really difficult to find something positive to say about them [Oilers]. Sometimes I try, but I just can’t.
Source: http://hfboards.hockeysfuture.com/showpost.php?p=90979665&postcount=413
And they beat Chicago! They’re probably a shoo-in.
There are people here ranting about not rewarding performance, and yet it appears Eakins has.
There are people here ranting about Hunt being useless, and yet clearly he has not been.
No need to panic guys!
It is only 4 games
And the center position???
This is a lot of pressure for a very young season. I think the sample is too small to draw 95% of the conclusions being drawn.
It’s more than ok to be critical, but we should also be fair.
My thoughts.
BTW, place your bets on who gets sent out of town first: Nurse, Draisatl, Petry, or Eakins. At least one of them probably goes before game 10, and it might be Eakins.
I’d say people felt Hunt with Schultz on the top pairing was a stretch, and that the decision to help out the Power play over (say) Martin Marincin is curious. I haven’t read anyone saying Hunt is useless. He has some nice things.
It’s more than ok to be critical, but we should also be fair.
Self inflicted wounds have absolved the fans of any responsibility to be fair.
No one is ever absolved of the responsibility to be fair.
Pouzar,
Matt Henderson @Archaeologuy 30s30 seconds ago
As per Oilers Now, Todd Nelson said he was shocked that Marincin was back in the AHL because he’s an NHL Defenseman
*****************************************************************************
To steal Ray’s line from last year….I wonder what the players in the ROOM think of MM down on the farm. Or Petry being scratched. Or JS getting Ryan Suter icetime at the expense of others.
We will never find out of course….but I wonder.
Well it isn’t the tweet that I was hoping to find on oilers.nhl.com, but it’s still nice:
Edmonton Oilers ✔ @EdmontonOilers
#Oilers prospect @GregChase9 named to Team @TheWHL for 2014 SUBWAY Super Series | READ > http://ow.ly/CSJJJ | pic.twitter.com/fkltXPk9ob
Yes. Everything is going to be ok.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDAmPIq29ro
Are you literate? I ask, because I didn’t once mention Fenwick close.
You need to learn what counts and what does not count as a reason. Then you can sit near the adult table.
Mike Chambers ✔ @MikeChambers
Follow
From #Avalanche PR: If Semyon Varlamov does not play tonight he will go on IR. So his slight groin injury could be more than that
I am sure the fancy stat gurus have been all over this. But measuring shot quality by time between corsi events is a fascinating concept. This is part one in a series on this concept.
http://www.pensionplanpuppets.com/2014/10/16/6986961/nhl-data-mining-part-1-shot-quality-and-inter-arrival-times-between
would love to see where we stack up now. I am guessing not too well in the past few years.
He MUST have forgotten to stretch… I thought these guys were professionals?
These days I check out Slashdot about once a week, because they do post a few stories I don’t otherwise see.
Scientists Find Rats Aren’t Smarter Than Mice, and That’s Important
———
Bill Gates: Piketty’s Attack on Income Inequality Is Right
This one is interesting to me because I started reading Piketty yesterday. Here is His Billness in half agreement:
What His Billness is glossing over is that capital also yields social status and influence whereas consumption doesn’t (a friend in need is a friend of low marginal utility—we all know that’s not real status; you can’t buy love, but a habit of picking up the bar tab will entrain a “loyal” retinue in short order).
Bill’s personal heroine was leveraging disproportionate influence. His preferred solution sounds a lot like the old Hippo: Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet. Bill never cared about consumption the way he cared about influence. For lent, he plans to give up smoking cheroot cigars. Rather than being anti tobacco, he’s comfortably pro filter.
Normally I don’t read books this thick straight through. It cramps my style. I’m going to actually give this one a go. Supposing my arms hold out. This little item weighs 1.25 kg. Small for a chicken, large for a book.
I copied this passage out last night during the 2nd intermission. The
threefour highlights are mine.This book is in translation, but that has to be one of the most egregious uses of “by definition” I’ve ever encountered in a serious work. WTF does it even mean?
I think at some point during the second period Stauffer was deflecting attention from the shit show on the ice and he said this (630CHED again as I took another crack at my New York style cold-rising pizza dough):
There’s that word “always” again. “Always” seems to mean that Hemmer and Moreau could be pretty much counted on to at least saw off any given home and away—total sample size domination across the board.
Devil’s Dictionary
the world: that for which injustice is monotonic increasing
That doesn’t even work there, though there are certainly some Chicken Littles out there for whom this serves as an operational tautology.
progress: injustice inflation
Turns out brevity is the soul of wit, after all. That’s a nice little Rosetta stone by which to interpret the footstompers demanding progress at long last. Most people oppose injustice when the spoils are thin.
We finally watched the last three episodes of The Sopranos season five. I love the first seasons when Tony was highly unstable, and Dr Melfi had him on spin cycle. As the show progressed, Chases’s relentless cynicism began to wear on my nerves. I loved Buscemi in the Blundetto role, but I simply lost interest in TB’s character arc, and the whole plot line of finally putting Adriana out to woodland pasture seemed like the final sixty games of last season. Suspense? Not much. Gruesome turns? In abundance.
The other day there was this anomaly where I inadvertently watched the same movie twice: The Man Who Wasn’t There of the title quickly forgotten.
The scene where Billy Bob brings the falsely accused Frances McDormand (his what-the-hell-why-not wife) her petty effects is right out of David Chase.
Just like The Sopranos it’s a great scene on its own terms, it didn’t register on the part of my brain that demands a second helping (I kind of wish it had landed on the part of my brain that averts a second helping, though there are worse fates in life than a repeat viewing of a lessor Coen production featuring a young SJ pursing her puffy jujubes while trying way too hard to please).
“Focus attention on the right questions” echoes Eakins pretty much word for word when first interviewed about the Dellow hiring. And I think MacT also used a similar turn of phrase. (Or perhaps I have them reversed in my failing mind.)
———
I’m starting to figure some things out about the social dynamics of group dysfunction and today’s thread would be the perfect opportunity to post these ideas, but they aren’t quite fully baked yet.
What I wrote in my notes the other day looks like this:
* one year of experience, times six
* six years of experience, times one
The group falls into the trap of thinking we have all the bases covered, by the social algorithm of divide and conquer.
* a single-agenda perspective, times six
* a six-fold perspective, times one
In low-dimensional spaces, gradients are prominent. On a six game road trip to visit LA, Anaheim, SJ, Boston, Washington, and NY you almost certainly want to visit each coast as a group of three, though you could instead change times zones six times three hours.
Hypersphere packing is one of the foundations of error correction codes. A 256-bit data packet might have an error correction code defined as space of 256 separate dimensions, one for each bit. Things are little different here than for the familiar one, two, or three dimensional world.
On average, all points in high dimensional spaces are roughly the same distance apart. On your six game road trip, you can do your trip planning by flipping a coin with very little impact on total hypermiles flown.
This is the entire ruse behind the maddening phrase “peak oil”. We’re looking at the world here through a one-dimensional lens (barrels produced, on a time metric). There are places in Saskatchewan that are higher than any nearby point, and you can still watch your dog run away for three days. Perhaps that’s why “peak potash” hasn’t gained the same currency. Low dimensional spaces always bring the peaks and valleys into sharper relief.
———
As anger mounts, dimensionality decreases until dressing Petry against LA is the salvation for seven long years of sorrow.
If one evaluates Eakins and MacT through the single-dimensional lens, there’s not going to be much evidence in evidence that these are smart men.
“Smartest man in the room” is halfway true, and halfway a declaration that “I don’t like those stinking higher dimensions”. Top level management is often operating in a decision space with a dozen prominent dimensions. From here, it appears far less likely that dressing Petry against LA is the salvation for seven long years of sorrow. The more agendas one loads into the hopper, the flatter the decision space becomes. The decision space also becomes far more complex, and the bad far outnumbers the good, but the best decision is generally pretty tight up against the second best decision, but with a different weighting function on everything you’re trying to accomplish. You’ve got six pawns to advance, and there aren’t huge strategic differences in how you go about it. If they all need to move, any order is roughly as good as any other order. Of course, it makes a world of difference to how well you sleep at night for the duration, and even there you’re highly exposed to luck and chance.
———
Chapter One of Capital begins by relating this incident:
This is also a dimensional conflict. For the peasant, it boils down to bread on the table, while the landlord is losing sleep over the sweeping change of Victorian England, in the scope of geopolitical world order.
———
The final piece of my half-baked mental model is the role of purity. Purity is the human reflex on the side of the conflict where less is more—those for whom a 3% better chance of winning the LA game is the difference between sane and insane management.
Purity tends to run with taint and bad smell, the cure for which is always to purge.
Purity is also the sharp edge of the wedge underlying the human attraction to monotheism, but that’s a personal sentiment, and not part of my theory. It does explain, nevertheless, why I tend not to bite on the hook baited with peak oil collapsing atmospheres.
PS: I realize this isn’t the smoothest exposition. I did say it was half baked.
I suppose you could argue that we don’t have a ‘responsibility’ to anything, as we’re not the ones making the decisions. But if we go that route, it seems we also cheapen the discourse to the point that it is nearly meaningless. If we’re not being fair and rational in our assessment and critique, why even bother to assess and critique in the first place?
For myself, my own sense of pride and integrity says I always have a responsibility to be fair. If someone else behaves otherwise, that’s on them. But I’m not going to lower myself because someone else doesn’t value or understand fairness.
Lowest common denominator is a crappy way to set our standards.
This is a flawed team at the top. Organizationally. The team does perform due diligence in hiring people. Played in the dynasty days or been with the organization long enough? Welcome abroad. Semenko. Bucky. Howson. Lowe. MacT. Dallas Eakins didn’t even have authority to pick his assistants in the first season. Even when pressed to fire Bucky, they offered him another position with the organization – a clean break? Nah. Not to our boys.
How many people were interviewed for the GM position? Instead, they hired another dynasty days member in Craig MacTavish when in reality, he should have been named assistant GM at best. The good he’s done is completely countered by all the bad. If we ignore his verbal, and measure him by his actions, he’s not overly ahead of Tambellini.
Speaking of Tambellini, how did he get hired in the first place?
An Oilers employee (Lowetide – please feel free to confirm with Stauffer or anyone in the organization) has this story: “Hiring a real GM would involved Lowe stepping back from his president role. Most established GMs know the mess here and know they would need full autonomy otherwise it’s not worth coming. MacT tho or any old buddy of Lowe’s will be fine with him still being president and having an influence on decisions. Hence why no search was conducted when MacT was hired. In 2008, a deal was all but done to sign Doug Armstrong as our new GM. All he asked was to have the president title as well so that he could have autonomy. Lowe would not give that up. So they hired Tambellini who was desperate for any GM position, passed over internally many times in Vancouver. Armstrong turned the blues team around very quickly and into a legitimate contender. We have gotten worse and worse.”
Look, it’s true, there is a lot of good work that has been done with this team:
The roster is much improved over 2 years ago, despite the attrition.
We have better offensive and defensive assistants than before.
Not sure about Acton. I have no idea what his actual contribution is, seriously.
Our Offense is a lot better, their supporting stats and utilization appear pretty good.
Chabot has developed an appalling track record and should be let go.
MacT has given Eakins a reasonably good D roster and he has shown that he doesn’t have a clue what to do with them. Nor does he have a clue about putting in effective systems, and if the modus operandi is the same as last year then that would indicate that he is using Ramsay as his yes man.
Eakins is now the weakest link and the bottleneck to this team’s progress. Even if he starts icing his statistically most effective D his only hope is to step back and let Ramsay put his systems in on O and D, in effect make Ramsay the HC by proxy. Dallas himself does not appear to have the grasp required to do the job.
He has a contract, let him enjoy it lying on a Caribbean beach or something, spending time with his poor family. The team may be better off without him or Acton there at all.
Eakins is now the weakest link and the bottleneck to this team’s progress.
And it was a rookie GM that hired a rookie coach, who was above his head in that role.
Firing Ralph Kreuger may have been a mistake. Sure the underlying numbers were poor under his regime, but the team (on paper) was considerably worse and his schedule was solely Western Conference based.
There was reason to believe he had earned the right for more time.
Eakins has not earned anything.
Fuck. The Oilers make me mad.
i called in today while I having lunch and listening to LT’s show
You know, there are a lot of lawyers on this site, and a number of other individuals with a pile of ‘expert’ credentials.
I say that if the Oilers don’t turn this thing around by next year at this time, we launch a class action lawsuit on behalf of Oiler Fans everywhere for the damage this team has done to our soul.
Now, I know the lawyers out there will say we would have trouble establishing ‘oiler fans’ as a ‘class’ and that damage to the soul would be difficult tort to prove.
I figure we are smart enough to figure out how to work around that kind of thing. Besides, I bet that there are a few judges who follow this page regularly….
This cheers me up.
http://www.tsn.ca/video/maclean-praises-lazar-ahead-of-avalanche-clash-1.108454
Love that kid, even though he’ll probably break our hearts when the Senators come to town.
Gold star for Woodguy. EVERYONE should take an early lunch and listen to the show. 🙂
Indeed. I’m constantly judging all of you.
I need to find a way to get your stream unblocked from our corporate firewall. Though I suppose I could do the same thing I do in these comment threads and jut call in and talk about whatever without really having any clue what’s going on.
What about a late second breakfast?
I know the perfect lawyer to help spearhead this cause. I can’t figure out how to get a hold of him though… his website’s been down for a few months.
I think you’d have to establish something about the purchase of a ticket tying in to an expectation of entertainment being provided by the home team and base it all off of the Oilers organization operating in good faith in providing that entertainment. Tough to get all those logical ducks in a row, but it isn’t outside the realm of possibility.
Of course, if you were successful ownership would probably sulk and start showing their faces in Seattle and Las Vegas and other such puerile behaviours.
Elevenses?
Any Techies out there?
I was barely able to get download speeds of 1Mbps last night while trying to stream the Oiler game on Hockeystreams. After a few tweaks of my Wireless N network adapter today I am regularly up over 22 Mbps now(what I am paying for). Could this really have been the issue all along with my shitty wireless connection.
1. Disabled N Mode
2. Disabled Bluetooth
3. Changed Roaming Aggressiveness from Medium to High
4. Changed Transmit Power from Medium to High
I only made these changes at the advice of a online Dell troubleshooter.
I know the performance of cable internet is lower as more people in the area log on but this quite a drastic improvement. Any ideas?
teacher’s pet.
😉
I don’t think anyone is arguing that it is a sufficient sample, only that this 1/20th of the season is horrifically similar to that of last season. We don’t need that trend to continue.
Panic = no
Concern = grave
The post-game interview with Scrivens is pretty revealing. Reading between the lines, this team has a lot of work to do, a lot of major problems to address, and not much time in which to do it (-4 games, it would seem). All the while being under the microscope that is Edmonton pro hockey.
Which leads us to wonder if the team should still be in that state. The ‘my bad’ presser after the first 20 games last season, was supposed to be a turning point. And while some improvement was observed over the next 60, it seems that all that was wiped away over the summer, and they’re back to learning basic hockey stuff.
I hope I’m wrong.
Kyle Brodziak and Acro should be able to shoulder the load until Draisaitl and Yakimov are ready. The Center position is only in need of a short term fix. The Management’s position that Schultz is a Norris candidate is in need of a bold re-adjustment.
I’m on my phone during a 15 minute break at work. I’m trying yo respond to several people at a time.
You’re just an emotional, condescending type and I won’t suffer being lectured by the likes of you on the finer points of debate when you get so worked up about a silly little meaningless exchange of opinions.
For the record, Ferraro seems to agree with me.
Wow – 1 Mbps? Was that measured with speedtest.net? Can you run a speed test while plugged into wired ethernet? That would be a big tell.
Those changes seem okay, although I’m not sure why they disabled bluetooth. Increasing power might just be one way to overcome some interfering signal, but it’s better to address the reason for conflict.
How many other wireless networks are near you, and how strong is their signal strength relative to yours? There are some parameters that you can change to avoid interference with other wifi signals (channel allocation), depending on your router type.
Also, is your wifi router parked near a cordless phone basestation in the 2 Ghz range?
I agree about arco, noone is complaining with his game, he has delivered just like early last year, also to be able to finish that pass you need to be good.
I love the Leadbelly version of that song.
Nobody Knows You When You’re Down And Out
No, I plan to put him on the stand and have break dramaticly under pressure and cry out “the Oilers have crushed my soul!!!”.
That will be the climatic moment of the post court case movie about us!
Yeah I was using Speedtest.
I have wireless networks all over me. Only about 3 with decent signal strength. Mine is the strongest thankfully.
My wifi-router is down the hall (about 30 or so feet) from my 5.8 GHz cordeless phone base.
Another phone base is in the Master (obviously separated by a wall) about 10-12 ft away.
The wifi router is the new Motorola Surfboard that Shaw is starting to roll out. They gave that one b/c I was having terrible issues with dropped connections that was later found out to be a shoddy line outside the house.
Cheers for the help!
How about when we get Eakins on the stand and ask why MM was sent down.
Lawyer: “Why was Marincin sent down?”
Eakins: “You want me to tell you some story so you can sleep at night?”
Lawyer: “I want the truth!”
Eakins: “You can’t handle the truth!!!!”
Marincin FREED!!!!!!!!!!!
http://theahl.com/stats/transactions.php?f_season_id=48&f_team_id=383
Very, very early in the year and the samples are small, but here’s FenClose for the league:
MIN 63.33
CHI 60.4
PIT 60
ARI 58.16
VAN 57.14
DAL 56.76
BOS 56.56
T.B 56.18
NYR 55.35
NSH 54.82
EDM 53.33
WSH 52.86
STL 52.63
ANA 52.59
FLA 52.58
NYI 52.13
CBJ 51.97
DET 50.37
L.A 50
N.J 49.41
MTL 48.59
CAR 47.62
S.J 46.55
TOR 45.33
PHI 43.94
WPG 41.67
COL 41.62
CGY 37.24
OTT 36.84
BUF 34.32
Everyone who has played CAL (including EDM), BUF or OTT has got a nice bump in their FenClose. Should take about 10 games or so to start smoothing out.
Last year:
L.A 57.13
CHI 54.99
BOS 54.35
S.J 54.76
N.J 53.7
NYR 53.7
STL 53.23
VAN 52.18
OTT 50.58
DAL 52.11
T.B 51.73
DET 51.09
CBJ 50.93
FLA 49.61
NYI 49.86
ANA 49.76
PIT 49.93
NSH 50.89
WPG 49.83
PHI 48.41
PHX 49.52
CAR 47.97
MIN 48.42
WSH 47.86
COL 46.66
MTL 48.06
CGY 47.09
EDM 43.68
TOR 41.36
BUF 40.64
Early days, but its something that I’m fairly heartened about.
Hmmm maybe that is the band that can conflict with wifi. I don’t deal with wifi routers except at home – my experience is all with commercial microwave systems, but the concepts are similar.
Yeah, Shaw is infamous for bad lines into your abode, but they will do everything but fix it (install amplifiers first!). If your DL rate drops that low again, you might want to run speedtest on a wired port if possible. I recently talked with one cable tech (who came to fix the cable into our house), and he said there’s an area in south Calgary that gets hammered with downloaders and video streamers in apartments. They need another node to serve that area, but are dragging their feet due to the cost.
For reals?
That’s an interesting observation
Thx for the help! I will run a test from now until late tonight every half an hour or so to see where my speed is at. If it does drop to ridiculous levels I will plug directly into router and test again and see what I find.
YEEEEEES
Pouzar,
10/16/2014 Martin Marincin (D) Oklahoma City DEL Recalled from loan by Edmonton (NHL)
Could it be?
MacT: “My bad.”
marvelous news. Though we’ve yet to see if it becomes yet another instance of a player called up, left in the PB a game or two, then sent back down.
Marincin recalled a per Gregor
Woot!
But don’t they need to make another roster move to make room for Marincin? IR Niki?
LT, Thanks for having Dennis King on today. He absolutely hit it out of the park today. He’s bang on!!! Brilliant. He had me laughing, nodding my head saying … yes, Yes, HELL YES!! I’d pay real money to sit, have a drink, and talk sports. Wicked funny and his opinion is welcomed. Thank you sir.
CHRISTMAS IN OCTOBER!!
So who gets sent down? Does Hunt get waived or does Pinizotto go down and we run with 8 D? Or is someone getting IRed?
Oscar to OKC I do believe…
…and then the trade is announced…
That’s a great idea! Instead of buying presents for my family in December, I’m merely going to take away nice things in November, and give them back on Christmas!
Brilliant!
You shut your mouth mister.
Suspect its Pinizotto
But OKC recalled Ludwig from the ECHL, which I assume was to cover Marincin’s spot.
Vinotintazo provided the link to which I am referring…
Hahaha! For Christmas I shall give my son… the Ventolin I stole from him 2 months ago!
icecastles,
How about when we get Eakins on the stand and ask why MM was sent down.
Lawyer: “Why was Marincin sent down?”
Eakins: “You want me to tell you some story so you can sleep at night?”
Lawyer: “I want the truth!”
Eakins: “You can’t handle the truth!!!!”
***************************************************
That was good….
Marincin FREED!!!
I have resigned myself that the Captain is here to stay this year but how do the Oilers get out from under that next two years of his contract? The NMC seems to make trading and waiving him impossible. I believe a player must be waived before he is bought out so a buy out is impossible unless Ference agrees to it. I don’t see a solution.
Betting on Ference a 35 year old to get fitter, healthier or better than he has shown this year seems foolish. Betting on all these things to get worse seems logical. The best case scenario I can see is that Ference becomes a fixture in the press box and is a little used and very expensive #7D from next year on.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76RrdwElnTU
If someone else in the house was downloading Netflix on the same wifi network then you would get that result too. Or if you had a bunch of users on concurrently.
I run a separate wifi for kids and visitors for that reason. The TV’s that run Netflix are all hard wired into the router.
The only real hope is that within 1 year Taylor Hall matures enough that he takes the C from Ference, and then the team can pressbox him more since he’s not the captain anymore. Ference may also be amenable to a buyout by then. Career’s winding down. Performance sagging. Take the money and run!
Now the next step is usage. Your best d pairing should get 25+min. Let it not be J. Schultz.
Done, where do I sign?
I like LT’s suggested pairings and hope that’s what we see tomorrow night.
Every time I think about how bad the Oilers are, I remind myself, at least our top line is not consisting of a Tyler Arnason, Mark Bell and Kyle Calder.
Those were lean days for the Blackhawks.
See the thing is though, Chicago turned it around since then.
When is it going to happen for the Oilers?
http://www.hockeydb.com/ihdb/stats/pdisplay.php?pid=25869
http://www.hockeydb.com/ihdb/stats/pdisplay.php?pid=28846
http://www.hockeydb.com/ihdb/stats/pdisplay.php?pid=42531
So with Marincin back up with the team the best 6 options are now on the roster. That is a good start.
Now, we just have to see about fixing deployment. Doesn’t matter if your best men are on the team if they don’t use them. See: Petry.
if the lineup is anything other than:
Nikitin-Fayne with 1line toughs
Marincin-Petry with 1/2 line toughs
Ference-Schultz with the softest minutes you can get
Then it is hopeless.
Give Schultz the PP push, give Ference the PK push, run the other 4 against the toughs at EV.
It doesn’t take rocket science to figure out how to deploy the 6 best options.
Will they do it? Or will we continue to see the Jultz all over the ice?
Any recently designed wifi router should be able to support quite a few users at once without reducing throughput of whatever protocol it’s running (802.11G is 54Mbps). If your neighbors have hacked into your signal and are stealing bandwidth, then maybe.
I have a 25 Mbps Shaw subscription, and have run two HD Netflix streams (one wifi – one wired) and a Hockeysteams HD feed simultaneously, with no ill effects. Wife could still browse the net.
Ah – yes, on the 14th (forgot about that). So the Oilers had a roster spot open already?
Thanks teach!
I work 6:30am – 3:30pm so 11:00am is my normal lunch time.
It’s great, LT’s show, no lines at various food vendors and fresh food!
Guilty.
This is just a supposition, but I’m thinking the fact that I first misread JUST********WOWIT’s username as JUST********VOMIT may be a reflection of my mental state.
My applegies. Is this one better?
Uh-oh
Jon Willis just tweeted that the Marincin transaction has been taken off the AHL site.
Gregor said it’s probably not official until tomorrow.
I hope.
Yup, gone. But Ludwig up from ECHL is still there.
Damn it Woodguy! Don’t fuck with me! I can’t handle this roller coaster of emotions!
I know they’re not exactly cap challenged but if they don’t have to make it official until tomorrow, than they save 1 day’s worth of cap hit on Marincin, which could be the thought.
They’d also have to send someone down to stay at 23, which there is no news of so maybe they’re still drawing names out of a hat to see who goes down, which is how I assume MacT makes those decisions.
“Hey Boyd, I know you played pretty well yesterday, but your name got pulled out of the hat, so you’re off to OKC this time”
If it was Hunt we would have heard of him being put on waivers today. So if it happens, someone’s IRed, Pinizotto’s going down, or Nurse is going back to junior.
MARINCIN PAROLE REJECTED ON GROUNDS OF COMMON SENSE
FREE MARINCIN
Odd that the Marincin to Edm. move was listed as an Oct. 15 transaction… Not that I can confirm that any longer.
bendelson,
Oscar is already there.
Fucking Bendelson.
/stevesmithifthatshisrealname
Still listed as Oscar sent down on the 14th…
wheatnoil,
Pinnizotto is also subject to waivers.
And I believe the rules state that if you put someone on waivers for the purpose of assignment that person comes off the 23 man immediately and you can recall someone. Either way the next day the player is either in the AHL or the property of another team anyway.
He likely is on his way to the airport, but recall is officially tomorrow to save some $ and cap room. Pretty standard.
Well, my first mistake. It was bound to happen.
Pinnizotto already cleared waivers and so doesn’t have to again until he plays 10 games or is on the NHL roster for 30 days. So he can be sent down right away.
I didn’t know that other piece though. It could still be Hunt then.
This is the correct answer.
Maybe, just maybe, Tyler and Ramsay collaborate on the D and we see their stats improve like the O has. I would think the save % may also improve.
Well Marincin’s 1 game on the farm has surely gotten him back into shape.
Nice work Chicken Hawk.
Ray Ferraro unloads on Dallas Eakins: “Would [Edmonton Oilers] be better served with a more experienced coach? They can’t be less served.”
For the record, I don’t share Bruce’s respect for Ferraro’s reputation, if this is the best he can muster on what ails the Oil.
With the roster out there on the ice, there were no answers, so this boils down to:
A) investing all your effort into helping the guys on the ice make the best of the situation; or,
B) worrying about how things look on TV and bending over backwards to put a good face on an impossible situation.
Ferraro seems to believe that an emphasis on optics wins the day. Why was the roster on the ice incapable of winning this game?
Earth calling Mr Ferraro. As Bruce points out, Ferraro must be watching re-runs of the previous season, which would go a long way toward explaining how he sees nothing changing.
The team was so busy over the summer changing the mix—both on offense and on defense—that perhaps we lacked a wee tiny bit of the playoff polish the LA Kings have accrued over the past three seasons.
Ferraro is busy here telling us that we need to get busy changing the mix, when clearly we’re already at Stage 2 of this process: tripping over ourselves while working to incorporate massive change.
You’ve got psoriasis. You go to the doctor who prescribes a steroid cream. Now your psoriasis starts to flake off three times as fast. Dr Ferraro pops into the conversion, “hey, buddy, you should do something about that skin condition—it looks terrible”. Excellent advice, Dr Ferraro. On this fine advice you should now:
A) stop using the steroid cream, flaking immediately returns to previous levels; or,
B) continue using steroid cream, and a few weeks from now the flaking ceases completely and all that remains is a shiny pink oval.
How would we ever know that we needed to treat this condition if the perspicacious Dr Ferraro hadn’t barged into the room? Is Ferraro the kind of analyst who built his reputation on knowing exactly when to comment on peak flaking, while proposing exactly what brought the flaking to the crescendo in the first place, while simultaneously implying that the men in charge were asleep at the switch? Just wondering.
He’s worried about Taylor Hall bailing from the organization. If the season continues to go badly, Ferraro is in favour of getting Drai and Nurse out of the conflagration. This will:
A) augment Hall’s optimism about next season; or,
B) dampen Hall’s optimism about next season.
Note that Ferraro is invoking the contagion meme, with that deep purity root stem.
When I read this Ferraro rant, I just don’t think Ferraro’s left hand knows what his right hand is doing.
They have a more experienced coach in Craig Ramsay. First comment Eakins made about this hire was “he’s already told me some things [from last season] I shouldn’t do”.
Ferraro is invoking pusillanimous logic. Yeah, what we need here is an onion toting coach with magic beans, who will instantly say “this is a big mess that will take plenty of time to fix”. You mean, uh, exactly as long as it was going to take Eakins to fix the same mess? Uh, tell us again why we hired you?
The standard for “can’t be worse” is when you reach into your toolbox for a different inappropriate tool. “Well, it can’t eat the threads any faster than the vice grips.”
No, the new coach needs to be able to do something actually better than the current coach, something that you believe is valid and will come to pass.
Marincin is presently locked up in the reconditioning doghouse for reasons that are far from entirely public. Most likely Eakins drew a line in the sand concerning every player on the team. He asked Marincin to train in a certain way, and Marincin decided to do one half and not the other half, gaining the weight, without also making the complementary improvement that Eakins demanded.
Once a leader sets standards, the leader has to maintain them, or lose credibility. The new coach has the luxury of discarding what the previous coach enacted. But the new coach can’t deliver a high standard of accountability without setting new standards of his own, only to find himself bound by his word come the following season. Or, the coach can wilt on setting high standards and just go with the optical flow. Such a coach might enjoy a lucky season and (briefly) become the talk of the town, but he’ll never achieve sustained success.
In every post-game presser so far, Eakins has emphasized that he doesn’t think most of the mistakes are the same mistakes. Yes, the mistakes are leading to the same outcome, grade A scoring chances from grade A territory.
As Eakins explains what he sees: last season, players didn’t know where to go on the ice; this season, players know where to go on the ice, but are making small errors in execution once they get there.
The worry here is not lack of progress. The worry is that Eakins is coaching a system to an immature group with a severe failure mode. If he’s coaching a system where Ferraro can’t see the difference between 10% achievement and 90% achievement of the coaching vision, is it going to be possible to get over the brutal hump from 90% to 95% where suddenly the system shines?
Krueger was much better at charting out a series of soft landings. He might have got there eventually, but perhaps it would take twice as long, with sooner signs of mild improvement to solidly mediocre, and then an age of men rising out of the bubble group.
MacT deliberately brought in Eakins because Eakins has a straight line approach in getting from A to B. Damn the soft landings, full speed ahead. This stemmed from impatience. Impatience was an easy sell.
Brilliant Ferraro has figured out that it remains an easy sell, while we’re already knee deep in the impatient steroid treatment.
Really? What we needed last season was a coach would tip toe cautiously, one careful move after another while Taylor Hall sits in the corner and nods approvingly.
This is the usual silliness. Unless he thinks MacT was a bad coach in 2005–2006. I remember many pressers where MacT raved about CFP’s outlet pass with its release timed to the narrowest fraction of a second to break the trap.
Smid was the guy on the roster best able to defend and least able to counter off the defense, and guess who was the first to go?
Schultz
Defend against the rush: when he feels like it
Defend against the cycle: he sometimes chips in here or there
Transition: yes.
Nurse
Defend against the rush: yes
Defend against the cycle: yes (someday soon including elite power forwards)
Transition: enough
Klefbom
Defend against the rush: yes
Defend against the cycle: yes
Transition: more than enough
Marincin:
Defend against the rush: yes
Defend against the cycle: often, but not including power forwards
Transition: yes
Our entire future defense corp is being built on the model of defend and counter, with perhaps the exception of Norris Jultz.
I personally suspect the master plan is to groom Jultz as the master trap-breaker, one of the hardest skills in the game. I’m pretty sure he’s getting more heat about his defensive game behind the scenes this season under Ramsay, while he continues to be pushed to become our outlet-pass warlock in residence.
(I’m not saying this is a sane plan. It’s only a sane plan if Jultz can actually achieve this elite skillset—and it starts to show in the near future. Our brain trust clearly thinks he can, and they’ve chosen this hill to die on.)
Ah, but they do if you can consistently break the trap and related defensive postures. And if we can’t, our killer forwards are dead in the water.
What does Ferraro ultimately recommend? Slow and steady, twice as speedy. Onions sold separately. Magic beans not included.
[…] From Lowetide, specifically on Ben Scrivens: […]
DeadmanWhaling,
Hey, you have to remember, Terry Jones wasn’t the only guy who lost his donuts – Ferraro did as well and guys don’t forget a thing like lost donuts.