OILERS MARKKANEN-ED FOR DEFEAT

You're enchained by your own sorrow / In your eyes there is no hope for tomorrow / How I hate to see you like this / There is no way you can deny it / I can see that you're oh so sad, so quiet

Paraphrasing Chevy Chase on the old Weekend Update: the Edmonton Oilers are still dead.

It's perfectly understandable (see yesterday's The Oilers: A Conversation and Life'll Kill Ya) why people would like to build a case that the Oilers can recover from losing Dwayne Roloson for the rest of the Stanley Cup final.

For fans, it's human nature. For the media types, it's as simple as knowing what your side your bread is buttered on. Their job is to try to sustain interest, and paint a picture of a photo finish in the making. Just look at how political campaigns are covered.

Granted, as Damien Cox writes in today's Toronto Star, Roloson had a mediocre game before he got injured on Monday. However, those 54 minutes and change he did play is a very small slice compared to what the netminder did over the first three rounds of playoffs, or what he seems to mean to his teammates.

Cox still persists in calling Roloson a "36-year-old journeyman goalie," but his point is a good one: people can be too quick to utilize the Jump to Conclusions mat. Roli strained his MCL; ergo, Oilers are SOL.

However, Cox wrote after Game 4 of the Western final that the Oilers would be in serious trouble if something happened to Roloson and that Jussi Markkanen is "not exactly a realistic option."

Now that Roli is out, Cox is writing that with respect to Edmonton's goaltending, "Solid will do just fine." Hey, he's just doing his job, but it's funny how the song changes. But that's neither here nor there.

Roli strained his MCL; ergo, Oilers are SOL. Yes, it's simplistic. Yes, it's reductive. Except there's no getting past it.

But, you say, good teams win four out of six games all the time in the regular season. Even the best teams will go through periods where they lose four out of six games in spite of themselves. Enough already. Don't get duped by the Nick Kypreoses and Mark Osbornes of the world.

No one's saying that Chris Pronger, Craig MacTavish and company are going to roll over and play dead, or even that Jussi Markkanen in 2006 is to goaltending what the Kansas City Royals are to baseball and George W. Bush is to details.

(The Oilers haven't named a starter, but it has to be Markkanen, unless they can convince any of the approximately 218 ex-NHL goaltenders serving as TV analysts during this series to get in goal. The CBC's Kelly Hrudey, an ex-NHL netminder, even told ESPN.com's Scott Burnside that Ty Conklin's cough-up might have been a Mitch Williams / Scott Norwood moment that will make it "a real challenge... for him to continue a National Hockey League career.")

Maybe, just maybe, this is this is the lull for dramatic effect before the Oilers come roaring back.
I'd like to believe that, I really would. Except for two things: 1) Carolina won Game 1 with a B-minus effort because they got Edmonton rattled into making mistakes, giving up short-handed goals and what-not; and 2) As noted before Game 1, one underplayed angle was Rod Brind'Amour and his teammates' strength on faceoffs: Carolina won 62% of the draws on Monday.

Oh, the series is not over, but it's looking pretty pre-ordained for Carolina. Oh, an Oilers win without their main man in net could happen, in theory. But hey, in theory, next March I could be Jennifer Love Hewitt's date for the Academy Awards when she accepts a Best Actress Oscar for her work in Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties.

OTHER BUSINESS

• The Blue Jays got back in the saddle by winning the kind of game they've made an art form of losing since, oh, about 1995. Sure, the Orioles stink, and will stink until their young pitchers come into their own sometime in 2008, but the Jays didn't crumble after an Aaron Hill error allowed Baltimore to tie it 3-3 in the sixth inning. Scott Downs induced an inning-ending double play, Alex Rios promptly homered, and it was a 6-4 victory. Last season in that situation, the Jays maybe get the double play but probably don't come back with two runs.
  
  The win did take the focus off the Jays' middle-infield tribulations. Hill is doing great temp work at shortstop, but ... it's temp work. No matter how much he hustles or gets his uniform dirty, stuff gets filed in the wrong place, you have to hold your breath whenever he another teammate chase a pop-off and also you can count on having to fix at least one paper jam before morning coffee break.
  
  ESPN's Dan Shulman was a guest on The Fan 590 yesterday and suggested the Jays may be interested in dealing for Cesar Izturis, who was the NL's Gold Glove shortstop in 2004. Izturis is the odd man out with the Dodgers when he returns from Tommy John surgery on his right elbow.
  
  If that happens, or even the rumours grow, the Star's Richard Griffin will be in absolute hog heaven. Griffin, one of the writers whom Moneyball author Michael Lewis slagged as baseball's "ladies auxiliary," will no doubt take great glee in pointing out how J.P. Ricciardi wants to acquire a player he traded away in 2001 (the same deal where the Jays were offered a choice between two young pitchers and took Luke Prokopec instead of Eric Gagné), since it was believed Izturis would never hit enough for the Jays' Moneyball offence. The hell of it is, he might be right.
• The post about teen movies raises this question: was Ione Skye the Amanda Peet of the late '80s /early '90s? It was a little ahead of my time, but think about: strikingly beautiful, could actually act a little, but somehow never became a big-time as you might have expected, based on her early roles. I mean, the last thing she was seen in was playing one of Drew Barrymore's girlfriends in Fever Pitch. (Yeah, I watched it.)
• In case you're wondering about the ABBA lyrics, it's a nod both to Markkanen's Scandinavian roots and his league-worst .880 save percentage, which would have been middle-of-the-pack in the NHL of the '70s. Know how I know you're gay? You own an ABBA CD.

That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.