Glenn Kubish

It’s the end of the week, the Oilers are playoffs-bound, and, sure, McDavid has been elevated to minor deity status here, but, have y’all been watching Draisaitl?! This week’s three things:                              1. 48   The Oilers star Leon Draisaitl needed three goals to get to 50 goals for the season. The Oilers were playing the Anaheim Ducks, a team good for everyone’s statistics. Shelagh and I were at the Banff Centre, listening to the long-long-short-long of the poetic freight train moving through town while we watched the game on TV.   Through centre ice, three Oilers, Evander Kane, Draisaitl and Brett Kulak, skated astride each other against two Ducks defencemen and one back-checking teammate. Kane carried the puck up the right wing and over the blue line. Kulak skated full throttle for the far post. Draisaitl hung back. The horizontal line of the Oilers attack had transformed into a trian...

Once a week I’ve try to notice what I noticed made me happy or grateful. So the noticing equipment doesn’t freeze up. This week's podcast is episode 100:                            1. Wherewithal   Through the kindness of friends and the historical support of taxpayers, I got to Rogers Place to watch an Oilers game in person. The person I watched, with the puck, without the puck, watched even as he skated onto the ice for warm-up, was Connor McDavid. It’s a different Connor McDavid than you see sometimes at the dog park or at the IGA, where he’s just another dog lover and coupon clipper. On the ice, on skates, free from the hold of the thick earth, #97 moves like the wind. Over, between, into, against, around, across, through, by. He skates prepositionally. And that would be quite good enough if what he did for a living was the league’s skating skills competition. He plays hockey, though, and that means he skates...