Saturday, December 27, 2008

Sports Update

A little ago, it was observed that things were going rather bizarrely well in the sports world. Time, then, to check back, and see if the momentum has been maintained!



Back on October 18th, we wrote: "Millwall have lost exactly once since August, and are sitting a comfortable third. Today they beat Leeds United, something that has not happened in almost 20 years." Millwall have stumbled a little bit in the last couple of games, but are still sitting a comfortable third, only five points off the league lead. Tomorrow's match, at home against a struggling Yeovil Town, is pretty a must-win, though.



We wrote: "Napoli are leading Serie A, having just beaten Juventus (ok, there are teams right behind them with games in hand, so they'll likely be overtaken tomorrow, but still...)." Napoli have slipped to fifth in Serie A, not that there's anything particularly wrong with that. In fact, it's one spot better than I had them predicted to finish! So far, they've managed to defeat Juventus and Fiorentina, but lost (narrowly) to both the Milan sides.



Finally, we observed: "The Edmonton Oilers are 3-0-0, and in all three of those wins they've successfully defended a 1-goal lead. Furthermore, their big off-season acquisitions, Mssrs. Cole and Visnovsky, already have 3 goals between them. Oh, and their power-play is scoring goals too." It would be very easy to get all pessimistic here, because the Oilers have seemingly fallen off after their quick start to the season. They're currently 10th in the Western Conference, in other words out of the playoff picture at the moment. However... the Oilers are three points better than they were last season at this point, and the general sense is that things are coming together. Hemsky is putting up a point a game, more or less, and the powerplay for once is productive. The three-headed goalie monster has settled down a bit, with Dwayne Roloson cementing himself in place as the #1 guy. Now, if the penalty-killing were to improve, and Sam Gagner and Erik Cole were to boost their offensive numbers a bit, all would be well. As it is, there's reason for cautious optimism.

2 comments:

Stealthy Dachshund said...

And your opinion on Sidney Crosby's slump would be?

Patrick C said...

Oh, he'll get out of it, and it's likely to be rather scary when he does. Actually, Crosby's "slump" has represented a pretty good stretch of games for most players...