Monday, March 7, 2011

Edmonton likes New so it will never be Old

Have you ever been to an old city?  One with rich history, great landmarks and stories on every corner?  How does that happen?  A city needs to be around for 1000's of years, survive war, be part of dynasties, and be ruled be great people.  Right? Do you know what else it has to do?  It has to keep the buildings it builds, build around them, maintain them, be proud of them.

This is something Edmonton is not good at.  We like new.  We have the money, and not much to do in this winter wasteland, so when a building gets a little old we decide to knock it down and do it again.  If we really like the building we might move it to Fort Edmonton first (didn't bother with city hall though)!  I for one don't like this approach, and when I think about the current new arena debate I wonder if it is another situation where we are overlooking what we have because we want something new.

New is nice!  We all like new, shiny, fancy things.  Sure they cost money, but it is worth it because well new things are NEW.  We want to be world class right?  We can't be world class like our fancy brother Calgary if we don't do it up.  I saw one study or report or something near the beginning of this debate talking about a Rexall place renovation, but it was quickly dismissed.  Why pay a third of the price to fix what we have when we can spend triple and have something NEW.  This attitude seems wasteful and maybe we need to take a closer look at why everyone is telling us the Oilers cannot survive at Rexall Place.

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

2011 NHL Trade Deadline = Bust

Not much worth talking about happened on deadline day 2011 in the NHL.  Minor league swaps, role player additions, and boyes to Buf.

In oilerville the talk is about Dustin Penner, whose trade is regarded as the biggest move of the day.  My initial reaction was that this trade makes some sense.  A young player who was a top 15 pick, another first round pick this year and third round (maybe second) next year.  What followed was extensive debate and many arguments both for and against this trade.  After listening to many points of view and reviewing Teubert's history I'm leaning toward this trade being a bust.

I previously posted that we shouldn't trade Penner.  He scores.  He is big.  We don't have that anywhere else in the lineup.  Trading him and not getting something that fills the void back pushes our rebuild back even further, and could make the going a lot tougher for our young players in the next year or two as they will face the top checkers and defense the opposition has.  We didn't fill the void.  A late first round pick won't fill the void.  A third round pick next year won't fill the void.  And Teubert definitely won't fill the void.

Sure, we may package that pick for something better, but we will have to give up something else we already have.  There was no need to make this trade and if this was the best offer out there we should have passed.