Oilers Trade Symth

I don’t exactly feel sorry for Oilers fans, being a huge one but I know exactly how they feel. Canucks fans had the exact same feeling when Mike Keenan traded Trevor Linden to the Islanders years ago. Sure, the Canucks got the better end of that bargain, but the trade still hurt a whole lot. Few players have ever had the connection to a city like Linden did with the Canucks.

On the other hand, Ryan Smyth is demanding more money than he is really worth, and his agent is Don Meehan, who is basically the Scott Boras of hockey agents.
today's deal is clearly a case of throwing the 30-goal scoring golden baby out with the bath water.

I wouldn't call Lowe cheap (how else can you explain the loyalty contracts to Staios or Pisani?) but we're talking a difference of a million dollars: a couple of Toby Petersons, really.This is Ryan Smyth. The man, who, for the record [tears of pure oil welling up in my eye], I've always felt was a much more important player to the Oilers than Mark Messier.

He was our last shot at a real Stevie Y type: a true blue Oiler with a special failure of imagination to think of playing anywhere else. At one time, I thought things like institutional memory were important, that we weren't just cheering for laundry, the idea that teams could have distinct identities that could span decades.

The salary cap era has only made players even more expendable. I'm under no illusion that hockey isn't a business, but it's an increasingly cap-fixated, mercenary one, which totally sucks, especially today.If I close my eyes, I can see Ryan Smyth's ferrety face; his slinky, durable body slipping past a check on the boards; and of course, that small pile of blood and teeth left on the ice during the 2006 playoffs. As a Edmonton Fan in Lethrbidge, I hate to see the battle of alberta slinked to calgary but I dont Think Lowe mad as BAd a CHoice as Everyone thinks that he did.