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This article originally appeared on VICE Sports Canada.(Editor's note: Welcome to Under the Bucket, where Deaner from the classic flick Fubar tackles all things NHL for VICE Sports. You can follow him on Twitter and read previous installments here.)How's she goin'? When I was leavin' the bar last week I had this great idea to call the pizza place so that when I got home the pizza would be there at exactly the same time as me. But, as I'm biking home, buddy calls and says he's got some beers and his sister might swing by so I veer off for his place and totally forget about the pizza guy. I feel pretty bad about leavin' the fuckin' delivery guy with a deuce of unpaid large ones, but you know shit happens, right? Wrong.Next day I biked over to the pizza place and told 'em what happened and they charged me for one pizza. The girl at the counter thought I was so sweet for doin' that, she gave me her number and said beers, pizza, maybe more next time she's in the neighbourhood. And that brings me to the Edmonton Oilers.
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Unless you got your head up your ass, you know that the baby Jesus, a.k.a. Connor McDavid, bunged up his clavicle and ain't gonna be playin' any time soon. Now, I feel bad for the kid, just like I would if anybody got injured (except fuckin' Ulf Samuelsson, that dirty sonovabitch), but I just ain't feelin' too sorry for the Oilers. OK, their fans maybe, but not the Oilers, because this is a classic case of what Merlin calls the harmonization of the Universe. The Oilers got 600 top FIVE draft picks since 2008 (I think my math is right on that), and SEVEN YEARS LATER they look as close to making the playoffs as I am to getting a spot in the Melonville Knitting Circle. And look, I was fuckin' stoked a Canadian team got the Lord Saviour little baby Jesus, but you can't keep winning the draft lottery every fuckin' year and not expect a little bad luck to come whippin' down the pipe and crack you in the balls now and again. That's just how Merlin works, you know?Oilers fans, here's what you do—just forget the baby Jesus ever existed, and then when he comes back and he's on your team, it's like when you find $20 in an old jacket. FUCKIN RIGHTS, LET'S PARTY! Hey wait, I was gonna tie this Oilers thing into the pizza story… but for the life of me I can't remember how. Look, if you fuck someone over by accident or on purpose, apologize and make it right. And if you get seven high draft picks in a row MAKE THE FUCKIN' PLAYOFFS. OK there we go, perfect.And speaking of makin' the playoffs, baseball is way over and Toronto is wakin' up to the fact that the Leafs ain't exactly Cup contenders. And even though they're pretty bad, all the experts keep sayin' this was the right thing to do—that they should have started the re-build years ago, that they're on the right track, blah, blah, blah. But if you ask me, the Leafs organization fucked up, again.
The Leafs went out and traded most of their best players. OK, so far so good… but then they go and hire the best coach in the world. So instead of tanking for a few years, winning the lottery and havin' possibly three top prospects who could be playin' by 2018, Babcock is gonna use his mojo to motivate these pluggers to achieve just enough to NOT make the playoffs, but not LOSE ENOUGH to win the draft lottery, either. AGAIN. What is it with this fuckin TEAM?!? Just TANK ALREADY. If I'm the president of hockey operations in Toronto, first thing I do is bring in Trent Yawney—the fuckin' guy won 30 games out of 102 as the coach of the Blackhawks back in the day, and LOOK AT THEM NOW!!!Seriously, if something doesn't happen soon, the closest Leafs fans are gonna be to Stanley's Mug in my lifetime is listening to that Tragically Hip tune on acid and pretending they're out fishing with Bill Barilko on Lake Wonacup. But Toronto, you can make a difference, guys. C'mon, you're good at this—you got Randy Carlyle fired! Let's get a fuckin' chant goin', "FIRE SHANNY, HIGHER YAWNEY. FIRE SHANNY, HIGHER YAWNEY!"