Dummies of the Week: Oilers Can’t Defend, Flyers Fall Apart & Ottawa Collapses

It’s that time of the week again for Dummies of the Week. If you haven’t seen this segment during one of our live shows over the previous two weeks, this is basically the segment where I give you, well, the Dummies of the Week. The people and/or teams that have been or done the dumbest things over the week. Okay, let’s get started on personally my favourite part of the week.

Edmonton Oilers Defence and Goaltending

Three games into the NHL season, and the Edmonton Oilers’ defence and goaltending have already raised warning signs so far. And yes, yes, I know they only gave up one goal to the Kraken last time out, but it’s the other games that are showing bad signs. In their first two games of the season, the Oilers played the worst team in hockey last season in the Canucks, a team expected to be just as bad again. The Oilers, across those two games, gave up 13 goals on only 45 shots. They hold just an .845 save percentage at 5-on-5 through three games and a team save percentage of just .785. That certainly, in my books at least, makes them dummies, and dummies Mr. Babcock needs to fix rather quickly.

The Philadelphia Flyers and Rick Tocchet

Heading into this season, coming off a very successful year last season after making the playoffs and knocking off their rivals, the Penguins, the expectations were that they would carry the good things into this season, and that hasn’t happened at all. Through three games (this is for last week, so their game on Monday doesn’t count for this), the Flyers have zero wins, two overtime losses, one regulation loss and just two points, and they have been just awful.

They have scored just four goals and given up 13 while being outshot 122 to 62. It has just been embarrassing. Just no effort, no heart at all shown by the Flyers. They have had 20-plus shots just once so far this year. Only one skater has a positive plus-minus so far this year. Everyone else has a zero or worse, with their best players in Sanheim, Konecny and Zegras all having a minus-three or worse plus-minus so far this year. Your best players just can’t be playing this badly. They just can’t.

It also doesn’t help that only three players have multiple points, and even then, it’s just two. I could go in on them more, but the Flyers players don’t deserve that effort, not with them allllllllllllllll being big, big, big dummies. Of course, there is just one player I will exempt from this, and that is Joseph Woll, who has a .925 save percentage so far this season despite two overtime losses on his record. At least he cared to show up and perform.

Now let’s go on to the other dummy from this section, and that is head coach Rick Tocchet. And I will be quick with this. What an idiot, to be just so kind to him so far. Okay, okay, let me get focused here. He has earned this great honour by basically blaming everything but his own system consistently and also, interestingly enough, not knowing why his own flipping team sucks.

He has blamed his players’ lack of execution. He has blamed the fact that they are practising the wrong things and that’s why they are out of sync with the puck, while also saying he doesn’t know. It’s scary to me that a coach who has seen three full regular-season games and five or six practices doesn’t know why his team is struggling. I do! Your stupid-ass system doesn’t work for your own players, and it is clearly not working, so change it already. Mr. Tocchet might just be the dummiest of all the dummies this week. Maybe just King Dummy would work best.

Ottawa REDBLACKS

You have made a fool out of me, you damn losers, but rather fittingly for this article, you stupid dummies. Okay, okay, time to focus here and get serious, or as serious as one can get while calling other full-grown adults dummies while sitting in my bedroom doing nothing of real importance.

Okay, okay, back to the task at hand. The REDBLACKS headed into halftime Friday night against Hamilton up 16-13 and had just picked off Harrison Frost to end the half. They were doing really well, and you would think the effort and good play would continue. Well, then they wouldn’t have been the ones called the dummies, would they? No, the REDBLACKS produced zero points in the second half and didn’t play a full game for the 15th time this season.

They had just 293 yards of total offence, 208 of those through the air. Yes, just 208 yards in four quarters, just 16 first downs and 23:47 of total time of possession. I don’t believe I even need to bring up any more stats than the fact that their defence gave up 34 points, 21 of which were unanswered. Dummies, dummies, I say! The entire organization is straight-up dummies. No heart, no one caring, nothing, just dummies.

These have been the Dummies of the Week. I will see you next week for more of this amazing segment. So come back and see if any of these guys return to next week’s Dummies of the Week!