Are you ready to rumble???

The 2006-2007 NHL season is about to begin for our Edmonton Oilers. The puck drops at 8 pm, so we're less than two hours away. This is my second year as a season ticket holder, the most glorious purchase I have ever made. It's nice to have money. So nice!!!

So the Oilers have been getting dogged by all the pundits (Hockey News picked them to finish 12th in the West). Either most are picking the Oilers to miss the playoffs or just sneak in as usual. I do not believe that will be the case. I'm picking the Oilers to fight Calgary for the Northwest Division crown, thereby, either finishing in the top three in the Western Conference or top five if they don't get the Northwest crown.

Yes, lots have been made about the Oiler blueline. I don't want to get into that very much, but I will say the blueline you see on opening night will be drastically different come April. Lowe will use his magic wand and voila, great deals will be made.

So with strong goaltending, the most deep set of forwards in the league will balance out our inexperienced defense and the Oilers will have a great year. Roli and Smitty will be giving each other more love come the playoffs.

To see other predictions, check out the following sites:

Sportsnet
TSN
Edmonton Sun (pretty good predictions here from several sportswriters)
USToday
ESPN (most are picking the Ducks to win it all....hilarious!)
Sports Illustrated

Well there are a few predictions. But we all know how well they predicted things last year, don't we? So these are more for entertainment purposes.

I'm predicting an Oiler victory tonight over Calgary in the season/home opener.....4-1.

UPDATE:

Well damn I'm brilliant. The score ended up 3-1 so I was pretty close! Also, the Western Conference banner was unveiled. It was short and quick (thank you Kevin Lowe), and then the players came out on the ice. Perfect. I didn't want a prolonged celebration for finishing second. The opening had a nice highlight reel of the Oilers playoff run.....and guess what? Pronger was practically non-existant in it. I think there was one quick shot of him in the entire video. hahahaha Awesome!!!!

Hemksy and Sykora are dynamite together. The best 1-2 punch I've seen since Gretzky/Kurri. Seriously, they got some chemistry!!!! It's very possible the Oilers will have their first 50 goal man since 1988 this year.

Lupul was invisible tonight.

The defence was quite good. The Swede was horrible in the first period, settled down a bit and then scored the third goal.

Roli was excellent. He's picking up where he left off last year, so that's nice to see. He was sharp and on his game. I think that bodes well for the Oil.

This team is going to be dangerous......they will be a scoring machine. Teams are going to have their hands full. They are better than last year!!!

What do you think of tonight's game??