Deadline day is the best day of the whole year. It’s like when I was growing up and the fairground came to town. I would spend hours just watching and working out which rides I might want to get on. Sometimes I would spend so long assessing that by the time I made up my mind all the rides were closed and the fairground was packing up to move on. But that didn’t worry me one little bit because there would always be next year, or the year after, or the year after that, or even the year after that.

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One of the best things about being the GM here in Edmonton is running the farm. I still don’t understand why we have our farm all the way in Oklahoma when there are plenty of farms just outside Edmonton but it’s best not to ask many questions cos that makes Kev seriously bitchy. Farms have always made me really nervous since the bad thing that happened at the petting zoo when I was little but Kev told me not to worry because it isn’t a real farm just like I’m not a real GM. He also said that most of the sheep are already up here in Edmonton working for the media. Apparently this was really funny and he laughed a lot but I was still confused about why our farm is make believe so he started yelling and told me to book a ticket and go check on Teemu. I don’t know what a Teemu is but it sounds pretty cool and if Kev likes them they must be great so I might get one for my office.

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Earlier this week I had a press conference. I really love them and Kev says they are an important part of my job. I got to speak and people actually listened to what I was saying and that makes me feel important. Sometimes it is hard to put all the words together right, but I told people how great Andy is and how he is the goaltender's best friend. Earlier I asked Kev if that's because Andy is the goalies' designated driver and he laughed so hard coffee came out his nose. I didn't get the joke but that's ok cos I like to make Kev happy. The only thing that went wrong was that everyone kept asking hard questions about Alice Hemski and no-one commented on my nice tan. I wanted to tell everyone how I went to Florida for the weekend with Kev, Mess and Mr. Katz and it was really cool. At first I wasn't sure we should go cos people seemed to think I should be doing important things for the team, but Kev said we needed to practice our golf so we could win back some of the dollars we'd overpaid our marginal players once April comes around.

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via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

So here are the various nominations for the 'post of the year'. All but one come from this season, which I presume is because Oil fans have purposefully obliterated all memories of last season in a desperate bid to retain a sliver of sanity. (I presume this collective amnesia is why Lowe and Tambellini think they can get away with a rebuild that constantly seems to reset itself, but that's quite another question).

So below the jump are the nominations with the links to the posts...

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While pondering whether Sam Gagner would ever have enough collective hairs on his chinny-chin-chin to make remotely convincing facial hair, I figured it would be nice to perhaps collect together suggestions for the C&B posts of the year. I'm hoping people might consider making suggestions in the comments below, if possible adding a link to the post they suggest. Perhaps it was one of Scott's pieces that push the envelop in terms of 'saw math good'? Or did you take a fancy to Ben's unrestrained verbal massacre of one more Oiler performance that simply didn't cut it? Could it be one of the great reports we've had from the farm? Or maybe it was Derek giving the Minnesota Wild a statistical golden shower?

There's been lots of great articles on these pages in 2011, so why not make suggestions below and then we then collect them into a poll to separate out the literary Halls from the Seguins.

Cheers,

Yeti.

It's that time of year again when everyone puts on a face of outer happiness while inside they're depressed about having to deal with the whole holiday season. The fact that the Oilers have transitioned from a young team over-achieving on every level to a young team drowning in sub-mediocrity suck doesn't help the collective spirits of the city. So, what do we do to release our pent up melancholy? We bitch. And boy, as the pages of the Oilosphere would attest, we are good at bitching. We might even be better at bitching than drinking. Well, it would be close and the two go together so well.

Lets cut to the chase. Across the myriad of gripes, complaints, accusations: what has been the single worst mistake of coaching/management since the season began? That's right, I'm asking what single decision is most responsible for keeping out faces pressed firmly down in the excrement of a slumping team? Please feel free to fully expand and explain your bitchin' below.

There is a definite love for all things Scandinavian in much of the Oil blogosphere and Finland is often the epicentre of our affection. Perhaps this can be put down to what Lowetide simply calls "The Tikkanen" factor? In any case, with three feisty Finns in training camp looking to assert their gritty play and win a place on the final roster, which (if any) of them is most likely to follow Norwegian legend Patrick Thoresen's example and surprise us all? In short, which Finn can pull a Norwegian:

Antti Tyrvainen - the agitator best known for his loud mouth and less-than-legal play

Teemu Hartikainen - the Kuopio Kid, chiseled from marble with game like bull

Lennart Petrell - the veteran defensive whiz with all the hillo you can handle.

Or is this all just a charade and by October, the Oklahoma City Barons will have created the largest Finnish population boom in the history of the city?

Editor's Note:  Yeti# is one of The Copper & Blue's most sarcastic commenters.  So when he writes a FanPost of a somewhat serious nature, it deserves a second look. 

Photo By:  Bruce Bennett, via Getty Images Sport

So it's that time of year again where miracles happen and whatnot. I was thinking of interesting xmas gifts and I figured that fifteen minutes in a room with Steve Tambellini and a syringe full of truth serum might be a start. Restrain the impulse to give him a slap and inject him with the drug - there's just enough to get him to answer one question fully and entirely candidly. But what would that question be? Perhaps for him to explain what the hell he was actually thinking with the Nikolai Khabibulin signing? Or how the Sheldon Souray debacle really went down? Or perhaps whether he really was that indecisive that he couldn't reach a decision between Jeff Deslauriers and Devan Dubnyk so why not have them all on the roster?

Just wondering about your suggestions for the question to ask dithering Steve? What bit of entirely untransparent and mindbogglingly confused decsionmaking (or lack thereof) would you be most interested in having explained? It's the Oilers, and there are so many to choose from.

News today that the Oilers had reassigned Martin Gerber to the AHL caused significant disquiet within the blogosphere given the veteran netminder's impressive play in two starts since his callup. "Martin has done quite well, especially for a guy who broke his neck," explained Oilers GM Tambellini at this morning's press conference, "but it is important to have our team MVP back." Tambellini was referring to Nicolai Khabibulin's recovery from a groin injury sustained when trying to hide a bottle of vodka down his pants after being pulled over by Edmonton traffic police on his way home from a bruising 5-0 loss to the Blackhawks on 17th November. When asked if he actually knows what 'MVP' stands for Tambellini froze, eventually snapping at reporters and threatening to park a zamboni up their asses if they didn't mind their own business. "Who the hell do you think you are asking all these questions?" he snorted before shouting "Go ask Kevin, he's the one who told me to say it" and storming off to re-assess his methods of assessing the team in preparation for a round of evaluating the possibilities for sustained period of team evaluation.

In other news, JF Jacques has been practicing hard to avoid stepping on cracks so as not to break his back. "It's the Edmonton sidewalks that do it," he revealed following practice at the rink in Montreal earlier today. "It happened twice last season where I'm just walking along thinking about how good Strudders is in the room and, bang, I step on a crack and I just break my back". GM Steve Tambellini has asked the City of Edmonton to assess whether a programme of sidewalk crack removal might be a possible as part of the rebuild. "We hear that this was a big part of the Chicago model and significantly reduced their games lost to injury," Tambellini commented in a private text to Robin Brownlee of OilersNation which was later mysteriously posted on Wikileaks.

The Oilers took a big step towards solving their problems today by reassigning Shawn Belle to the AHL. GM Steve Tambellini was overheard saying "this is the kind of proactive decision making that I define my career on". In a later press conference Tambellini praised Belle for his play in Edmonton but suggested that he needed time in Oklahoma to improve on specific skills. "We see a lot of potential in Shawn, but we need him to work a little more on being good in the room before he can transition fully to the NHL. We felt he would get a bigger opportunity to develop his humour and charisma with the Barons". The move was  applauded by veterans Jim Vandermeer and Jason Strudwick who are expected to release a collective statement later today welcoming the ressurection of their careers. "Shawn played well in his time here", commented Strudwick, "but unfortunately a rebuild needs leadership, comedy and ineptitude. At the end of the day, only hardened veterans like Jim and myself can really bring those intangibles to the NHL game". His teammate Vandermeer added, "Jason's right. We consider ourselves team leaders in ineptitude".