Go Away For 5 Days and Everything Changes. Tons of News

Why is it when you're around and trying to come up with things to talk about, nothing happens? Of course, when you leave for a few days there is all sorts of news to share.

The Oilers followed five straight road wins with seven straight losses. How nice.

The Olympic team for Canada and the rest of the world gets set, and there is big rumblings from all sorts of people that something big is coming for the Oilers.

First off, what about the dreary Oilers? Is it me, or when you finally needed your team to plummet to the bottom of the NHL, thus almost solidifying a decent draft pick, the draft is thinner than in years past? Imagine last year, had the Oilers finished bottom three (which it looks might be a lock the way they're are playing), Edmonton could be home to Tavares, Doughty or Duschene.

One of those players just made the Olympic team and is argueably the single biggest reason the LA Kings are a competitive squad.

Instead, the Oilers pick a year where the biggest name in the draft is Taylor Hall, and he'll likely be grabbed by the Carolina Hurricanes who somehow, are hands done worse than Edmonton.

Add to that players like Dustin Penner who were incredibly hot and now not even at a point-per-game pace and with Hemsky, Comrie, and Khabibulin out, and for the forseeable future, the Oilers are going to get much worse before they get better.

They play Toronto tonight, which normally would be good news, but Toronto has been a decent team and are clicking far better than an Oilers group who can't seem to find any chemistry.

Olympics

Team Canada was named and there were major surprises. Of four Flames rumoured, only one made the cut, that being Jarome Iginla who has been named as an Assistant captain. Bouwmeester, Phaneuf and Robyn Regher all were absent from the list.

Not surprisingly, Dustin Penner, who had once been given some consideration is not on the list. That said, how can you put Penner on, but keep Lecavalier, St. Louis, Jeff Carter and others off?

For the rest of the Olympics, Visnovsky, Grebeshokov were named to their respective Slovak and Russian sqauds. One deserves to be there and I'm sure you can guess who I think that is.

Tom Gilbert and Patrick O'Sullivan have a chance of making Team U.S.A, but my guess is based on their play, not a very good one.

Of course, amidst all of this is the rumours surrounding some big trades coming in the NHL as teams hit the half-way mark of the season and some injuries have occured on teams in serious contention.

The Oilers who will need a small miracle to make the playoffs, are sure to be sellers at the deadline and trades are already making the rounds including moving Ethan Moreau, Patrick O'Sullivan and Andrew Cogliano.

At this point, and has been noted by even the most patient of writers (ie. Robin Brownlee) die-hard fans all over are suggesting a blowing up of the team and if Tambellini can pull it off, moving over 75% of the team.

Brownlee even goes so far as to suggest that should Tambellini not pull it off, that he, Kevin Lowe and others in management say goodbye or be told to leave allowing Pat Quinn the opportunity to run things.

I'm not totally against it as I find Quinn's approach to how he'd like to build this team much more appealing than I do Tambellini who seems to be a lot of talk and no action. Even his talk has changed from where the season started.

Edmonton plays on PPV tonight and the way this team has played, I'd sit back and let others order it while I find a more constructive way to spend my money. However, Christmas brought our household full HD everything, and I'm interested to watch the Oilers in higher quality.

I'm sure it will out-do the quality of the play on the ice, but hey, it's the last game before New Year's...maybe the Oilers will surprise me.