* Item: Oilers hardly inspired in victory, but a win is a win is win. The Oilers 5-3 win over Tampa Bay had a feeling of inevitability to it. Even as Tampa came back to tie the score at one point, then again pulled within one goal in the third period, the Lightning never looked like a team that yearned for victory. Tampa is not the third worst team in the NHL for no reason. All Edmonton had to do was not make too many mistakes and the game would be handed to them, and that's largely what the Oilers did, bringing their record to 30 wins and 30 losses (five of the losses in shootouts or overtime). Tampa, meanwhile, has 20 wins and 40 losses (12 of the losses in shootouts or overtime).

Item: Oilers defence stuck with too many plodders now that Grebs is gone.

In Oil Country, the fans are in one of those deep dips on the rollercoaster ride. Everything is dark and down. Angry comments abound. No one is happy, and my own mind turns to thoughts of what might have been this season.

If only Dustin Penner and Craig MacTavish had been on the same page.

If only Kevin Lowe had brought back Curtis Glencross.

If only Sam Gagner, Robert Nilsson and Andrew Cogliano had found a way to pick things up where they left off last year.

If only Gagner and Erik Cole had been put together on the first day of training camp.

And if only Lubomir Visnovsky and Denis Grebeshkov

 * Hemsky misses Visnovsky and Grebeshkov more than any other Oiler

The marks are in for the latest stretch of Oilers games and it's evident that two key Oilers forwards, Ales Hemsky and Erik Cole, are slumping, with Hemsky played well below the standard of excellence he has set for himself this year.

After every game, either myself, Bruce McCurdy of Oil Droppings or Mike Patterson of Mike's Blawg has handed out a grade to each Oilers player. In the past 10 games, Hemsky has got an average score of 5.8 out of ten, Cole an average score of 5.6 out of 10.

In our grading system, a '5' is given to a player who has had an average game, a '6' to a player

* ITEM: Horcoff over-aggressive on Flames big goal (and Staples makes major error himself)

In the first version of this post, I had it as Ethan Moreau making the major goal-causing error on the Flames' second goal, and I blasted him for screwing up royally.

When I awoke in the morning, I wanted to review the goal -- something told me I might not have it quite right -- though I didn't imagine I had it completely wrong.

But that was the case.

Moreau wasn't even on the ice on that goal. I had mistaken him for Shawn Horcoff, who had been my hero of the game.

Sheesh! So it was me who screwed up royally in my error assignment. And it was Horcoff who made that

• * ITEM: Surprise, surprise, a great idea from an NDP politico about the macho game of hockey

When it comes to many aspects of life, I'm extremely skeptical about the New Democratic Party of Canada's various policies of social re-engineering. 

Sorry about that NDP folks out there, but it's hard for me to forget the worst excesses of the politically-correct 1990s, may they rest in peace.

During that decade, I had much first hand experience with a certain strain of super-heated fanatic who tended to think of hockey-loving, middle-class white men such as me as the enemy, who considered anyone who disagreed with their agenda of sexual, social and economic politics

* ITEM: Poor teams can't take on big contracts. Rich teams already have too many. This is a recipe for next to nothing to happen at the NHL trade deadline.

The Internet groans and shudders with rumours of NHL trades, much of the fevered talk kicked off by TSN reporter Darren Dreger, who wrote that the following names are coming up in trade talks: Chris Pronger, Erik Cole, Ryan Smyth, Jay Bouwmeester and Olli Jokinen.

In regards to Smyth, Dreger wrote: "Colorada needs to cut payroll and Francois Giguere is talking to teams about Smyth. The Avs won't ask Smyth to waive his no-trade unless there's