Surreal-ity

I was talking to one of my friends this week and we both agreed that the last week or two have been pretty surreal. For me, doubly so! The Edmonton Oilers are just one win away from making the Stanely cup final for the first time since 1990. That's a really long time ... long enough that I can barely remember sitting up "late" with my dad watching the games. At that point, I really didn't know what it meant since I was only seven years old. The last time I really was cheering for a team in the stanley cup final was 1993 when the Montreal Canadiens (for some reason, it is my favourite eastern conference team) won the cup. So a good 13 years later, and Edmonton is on the verge of getting back there!

The other reason I'm getting this surreal feeling is I leave for Italy at 2:00pm tonight! I'm there for about a week for a computers and games conference. Our hex program will be competing in the olympiad, so we're really excited about that. At this point, I don't think it has quite hit home yet that I'll be in a country a half a world away from home. Its only for a week ... but I haven't been that far from home before. At the same time, its really exciting to go see a new place for awhile - and I can't wait to see what I can take pictures of with my new camera!!!!

Heraldk

PSO Poker Rewards Freeroll + Oilers Win!

Quite the day today! My family decided to postpone our Mother's day celebration ... partially at my request since for some reason PSO's poker rewards freeroll was scheduled for tonight. I really didn't want to miss this freeroll because there was a huge overlay on it. It was a $10K freeroll which I qualified for by playing 750 raked hands at poker rewards. Less than 150 people qualified and only 75 people showed up! I finished in something like 17th/18th place or so for a profit of $210 dollars! Not bad for a couple hours work eh? The Oiler game was pretty incredible tonight too. The Oilers are playing pretty awesome lately. Hopefully they can wrap up their series against San Jose at home on Wednesday! Shawn Horcoff and Ryan Smyth were crazy awesome for the Oil, with Horcoff in particular making some pretty amazing plays!

Anyways, I gotta get to bed. 7AM will come way too early tomorrow morning I fear!

Heraldk

Why so busy?

Why do I feel so busy? This weekend wasn't all that incredibly busy. I mean, I was at a couple of parties, and spent a day with my mom on her birthday on Sunday, but that's not all that busy. And even though I've got a lot on my plate for school, I still come home and don't do much on school. I'll keep working on the various poker and casino promos that have made me a tidy profit over the course of the last year and a bit. What inevitably happens though is I'll sit down and play poker for a bit and then I'll realize that its getting late, and I end up going to bed later than I really should have. I'm still getting between 6 and 7 hours of sleep a night usually, but I still feel like I really need to catch up on sleep. So what am I doing tonight? Blogging before bed. And I'm going to the gym tomorrow for 8am. Here we go again! Still, a number of exciting things are happening.

The Oilers took down game 6 last night and boy was I happy. So were many boisterous fans who took to Whyte ave last night. I'm told it was quite an experience to walk down Whyte ... crazy people everywhere! The Oilers played a so-so to downright terrible game right up to the third period. That was where they promptly woke up and slaughtered the redwings in dramatic fashion. Nope ... the Oilers don't do things the easy way.

I finished off another casino promo the other day. This one was at intercasino for a value of $150 profit. Hoorah! I am now up $340 in casino promos. I've also been playing 2/4 limit at full tilt clearing another deposit bonus. I'm over 2/3 of the way to getting a full tilt microsuede jacket with full tilt points! I like free stuff! Not only that, I made over $160 on one night of play last week. I had a couple of smaller losing sessions this week and then made another $60 tonight. There's a lot of variance, but I feel like I'm playing pretty well and I'm certainly profiting. I've cleared about $70 of my $300 deposit bonus there so far.

Heraldk

First Oilers Playoff Game

Last night I was able to go to my first ever playoff hockey game, and boy was it a blast! The crowd was loud, half drunk and cheering really hard for the hometown Oilers. It was so easy to join in the loud cheering that I no longer have much of a voice today. The Oilers played an impressive game and deserved to win. They played an amazing first two periods of hockey. In the second period, Detroit just couldn't get anything going, and we walked all over them. Detroit managed to come back in the third which set the stage for a nail-biting overtime period that was almost too much. We sat on the edge of our seats for the entire time standing up everytime the Oilers came close to scoring. Finally, the Oiler's put the winner in and we all cheered like mad (I dunno where I found the voice to cheer!). There are three players that I think deserve special mention for this particular game. Chris Pronger, Michael Peca and Brad Winchester. Chris Pronger is a no-brainer. He played a ridiculous 47 minutes last night! With the game going a little shy of 90 minutes, there is no arguing that Pronger is a huge reason the Oilers are doing so well.

Second, Peca. I was immensely impressed with his play last night. There was a huge number of key little defensive plays that I picked up on during the game and I was just so impressed.

Third, Winchester. Where the hell did this guy come from? He played an incredible game, particularly in the first two periods. He had a huge number of offensive chances. He was on the ice for at least 2 of our goals, and he made some very impressive heads-up plays. This guy is going to be huge in a year or two. Heck, he's huge NOW!

There is only one thing I really didn't like about the playoff game experience. Many fans were boo-ing in the middle of the US national anthem. I'm sorry, but that's just not classy. It sickens me that fans think this is a good idea. Have some respect people! Okay I'm done.

Heraldk

A relaxing, unproductive weekend

Well, I hope I can get myself going next week. Both this weekend and the week preceding it were wildly unproductive affairs which is really not what I'm aiming for at this point when there's plenty I *could* be doing. I wasn't even all that busy with other stuff ... I just kept getting distracted by silly little things like Sudoku. I'm aiming to get to bed at a reasonable hour tonight and then get at the work I've got piling up tomorrow. On the other hand, I did get the chance to watch parts of all three hockey games CBC broadcasted today. The Oilers came out with an impressive effort in an exciting game that started at 11am our time *rolls eyes*. Ottawa's game was also quite exciting, even though they lost. I tuned into the calgary game 5 minutes into the third period ... but this one was not nearly as exciting. Anaheim looked in control of the game for most of the period especially with Calgary's Dion Phaneuf making a couple of terrible blunders that basically cost them the game.

In other news, I played some $2/$4 poker today at full tilt poker. I ended up down $2.50 for the afternoon, but I started playing again this evening and at the moment I'm up $38 which is kind of nice for half an hour of play tonight.

I also played in the PSO freeroll tonight, but wasn't all that successful. Its a shame because first place was a cool $2500 USD! I started out well by hitting some pretty good cards, but after that I just couldn't get a hand. I took a couple hits to my stack and then was forced to look for a hand. Finally, I picked up pocket kings and tried to get a double up off of a guy who used to be chip leader but had recently lost nearly all of his stack. He pushed me all in on the flop and I called. He had QT which had hit a ten on the flop ... and he turned the queen to win the pot. Ouch! So I was out in 133 place or so out of 281 people. Not terrible, but I think i could probably have done better.

Heraldk

Playoffs!

When the Oilers are in the playoffs, this is my favourite time of the year. Well, maybe not my only favourite time of year ... but it certainly ranks high! The Oiler game last night was exciting playoff hockey. Despite the disappointing finish, I think the Oil can certainly recover from the loss and come out strong tomorrow. I'm frankly confused with the "afternoon" game tomorrow though. The game starts at 11:00 am mountain time, and the only reason I can think of that they have it that early is because they want to put the triple header of hockey all day on Sunday.

But hockey players are used to coming out to play in the evening. The Oiler game is in the MORNING for us Albertans. Pro or not, those hockey players are going to be way out of their normal hockey game routine ... and I have a feeling we're going to see a sluggish game tomorrow morning despite the importance of the game.

Why is it so important to have a triple header of hockey? Frankly, I don't know.

Anyways, now that I'm done ranting, I watched the Montreal-Carolina game tonight, and was really impressed. I'm kind of a closet Montreal Canadien fan ... they're my favourite team from the Eastern conference and I was glad that they made the playoffs. I was even more happy to see them come out and play a really strong game against Carolina, which is apparently one of the best teams in the East.

Hopefully Edmonton can get their cylinders firing up and take on Detroit with all the skill I know they posess. I'd love to be cheering Edmonton and Montreal all the way to the stanley cup final!!

Heraldk

Oilers Make the Playoffs!

Its been an up and down season for my beloved Oilers. At times it has been damn frustrating to watch the team choke against weaker teams. At others, we seem to pull out all the stops and are able to come up with a big win here or there. They just never seem to make it easy on themselves. They've got a lot of talent, and there really should be no doubt that they make the playoffs. If only it were that easy.

Tonight was the 2nd last game of the season. Thanks the Shark's beating the Canuck's last night, it put us in the position to win a playoff spot - if we won our game and Vancouver lost.

Let me just say that the game was a little stressful. To my eye, the refs seemed to miss several penalties. Oh well! The game went down to the wire (which so many of our games seem to) and Ales Hemsky scored the winner with 30+ seconds left to play. A little scoreboard watching later, and San Jose beat Vancouver 5-3. So we're in!

I'm hoping to be able to get to at least one of the playoff games this year. Tickets are gonna be in high demand though, so it's going to be really hard to even get one pair of tickets. *sigh*. Wish me luck!

But we're in! Yay!

Big trades for the Oilers

Well, hockey season is super exciting this time of year. The trade deadline was yesterday, and our Edmonton Oilers are looking poised to make a push higher into the standings and deeper into the playoffs. Here's the trades we made: To Minnesota: 1st round draft pick, conditional 3rd round draft pick To Edmonton: Dwayne Roloson

Edmonton gets a pretty good goaltender and they don't even have to break up any of the team to do so. This really is about as good as it could've got since so many teams are looking for goaltenders. Not only that, teams that were supposed to be offering goalies decided not to trade them after all (Buffalo, Phoenix, etc). So in theory, Edmonton now has their goalie situation sorted out. Here's hoping!

To Boston: Marty Reasoner, Yan Stasny, and a 2nd round draft pick. To Edmonton: Sergei Samsonov

In this trade, the Oilers get a speedy winger who won the 1998 calder trophy, and can score goals. In return, they don't give up all that much at all. I have never really been impressed with Reasoner (though I have had no reason to dislike him). So we give up some prospects for a fast player who looks to fit right into the Oiler style of hockey ... sounds like a good deal to me!

Assuming the team continues to play as well as they have (lots of blocked shots, 2nd fewest shots on goal in the NHL, decent scoring power) ... we should see the team finish strongly in the last 20 games of the season and I am really looking forward to seeing them go deep into the playoffs.

Gooooo Oilers!

Heraldk

Hockey Night In Canada

Wow. My dad was able to get a pair of awesome tickets from his boss to last night's Vancouver vs Edmonton game and I got to take my sweetheart to the game. It certainly was an experience and a half!!

The house was packed with fans including a surprising number of vancouver fans. The game was exciting, though extremely frustrating in the 3rd period when the Oilers got into penalty trouble. Edmonton took a 2-1 lead into the 3rd period but almost lost the game. It was 3-2 until the final minute when Edmonton had a powerplay and had their goalie pulled ... and managed to score the equalizer.

Overtime solved nothing and we got to see our first shootout - where the Oilers showed quite a lot of talent - Torres and Hemsky scored for Edmonton while Maarkenen stopped both Naslund and Bertuzzi.

The atmosphere in a packed and pumped Oiler crowd is amazing. The volume when we scored was deafening, and we had to laugh as many of the Oiler fans shouted out their very opinionated comments at the refs. Like "This is the worst game I've ever seen in terms of ref-ing". I say that while I was none too happy about the number of penalties the Oilers took - I can't say that we should blame the refereeing. They did a really good job, and its the penalty crackdown that we need to make the game better. So kudos to them.

Heraldk