Hey, wasn't this crackdown thing supposed to help the teams that practiced firewagon hockey?

People in Edmonton had to be sharpening their skates at the mere thought that the game might return to something resembling the 1980s. Yet here we are two weeks into the liberation of offensive hockey and the Oilers have stumbled about as badly as any team out there.

	CHIRPIN'
	"Maybe we've lost our identity and what made us successful last year. Maybe we're resting on our laurels or looking for excuses. But we have to come up with a solution and do it in a hurry." -- Phoenix coach Bob Francis on the Coyotes' 1-4-0 start
	THE NUMBER
	971 Terry Sawchuk's record for goalie appearances, which Colorado's Patrick Roy is expected to match Tuesday against Edmonton.
	WHO'S HOT
	Wild goalie Manny Fernandez has bounced back from an off year with a 1.00 GAA and .967 save percentage in starting 3-0-0. He beat his old team, the Dallas Stars, 3-1 Thursday.
	WHO'S NOT
	Adam Oates has not gotten off to the fast start many predicted when he joined the Mighty Ducks. Oates has just one point in the past four games and is a minus-4 in that span.
	THIS WEEK'S SIGN ...
	that we are returning to 1980's-style hockey … A streaker tried to jump on the ice in Calgary Thursday, but fell over the boards and knocked himself out. He was revived and carried out on a stretcher (after a towel was used to cover his not-so privates, of course). See, we can relive the good ol' days.

The problem for the Oilers comes not from the fact that their speedy forwards aren't adjusting to the open ice, it's that their veteran defensemen aren't handling the pressure.

"It's hard to have any fire and to have a forecheck when you can't make a pass in your own end to get out of your zone," coach Craig MacTavish said. "And the worse we handle the puck, the more we want to handle it."

MacTavish followed a 3-0 loss to Dallas on Tuesday with a 7 a.m. cardio workout on Wednesday. What frustrates MacTavish so much is that his veteran players -- Jason Smith, Janne Niinimaa and Eric Brewer -- are the ones struggling.

Expect there to be plenty of passing drills in practice for the remainder of the season.

OK, we believe you already
While the Wild are assumed to be a hooking and holding team because of their ability to play a positional trapping game, coach Jacques Lemaire and GM Doug Risebrough are pleading their case that this team is all about holding position and not about holding up players.

Risebrough said the crackdown on obstruction has helped show just how little the Wild was stretching the rules in the past.

"I think it was a great misconception," Risebrough said. "We play defense like anyone else. But I think, if you watch us, we're a team that likes to skate. In fact, we think we'll be helped by the new rules."

So far, the Wild has been perfect under the crackdown, going 7-0-1 in preseason and 3-0-0 during the regular season.

Can I borrow that eraser?
Talk about Sybill on ice. After switching from skilled Europeans to tough North Americans, the Blues now are in a new incarnation.

Plagued by the loss of captain Chris Pronger with a wrist injury and trying to support a goaltending situation that is downright frightening (they lost their third goalie of the year Thursday when Reinhard Divis strained a groin), the Blues have decided to rein things in and play defense, defense, defense.

"To win, we have to be stifling defensively," Doug Weight told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "This team is about winning, so that's what we'll do. No complaints, we're a low-scoring team."

Never mind that the Blues have Weight, Keith Tkachuk, Pavol Demitra, Cory Stillman, Dallas Drake and Scott Mellanby. Never mind that Al MacInnis mans the point on the power play. This team is planning to win 2-1 hockey games.

Of course, the moment they vow to do just that, the Blues rip off a 7-1 win over Columbus. Oh well, you know what they say about creating offense from defense.

The depth chart