"Its just one of those days when you don’t wanna wake up, everything is f***ed, everybody sucks. You don’t really know why but you wanna justify, rippin’ someone’s head off. Your best bet is to stay away mother f****r – its just one of those days."
– Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit fame rapping directly to Oilers fans around the world.
So this is it is it Nation? After a season of waiting for someone – anyone among the 4,026 people collecting a Kay-Z paycheque to run this team – to step up and fix the squadron and provide us with a micron of hope. This is the best we could do is it?
It is clear that we have now crossed the threshold of a team looking to make upgrades to the current roster and have now become a team looking to blow it all up and let it all die. 17 points out of 14th place in the Western Conference, it’s hard to imagine how things could get worse for the Oilers.
But that is exactly what the monkeys running the zoo have been able to pull off.
So, lets take a quick gander at the trades the Oilers managed to pull off today shall we?
INSULT NUMBER ONE
Lubomir Visnovsky to the Anaheim Ducks in exchange for Ryan Whitney and a sixth-round draft pick.
Wow, where do we start with this humdinger of a crappy deal? Perhaps by pointing out that dealing away the only only offensive defenseman that isn’t currently staring down hand amputation surgery – helpfully announced with about an hour to the deadline we might add – the Oilers are basically saying "there is no sense keeping good players around here. Not with what we are in the midst of destroying."
RYAN WHITNEY – 4 Million per season, signed through 2012-13.
2009-10 ANA 62 GP 4G 24A 28 Pts -6 48 PIM
2008-09 ANA 20 GP 0G 10A 10 Pts +1 12 PIM
2008-09 PIT 28 GP 2G 11A 13 Pts -15 16 PIM
2007-08 PIT 76 GP 12G 28A 40 Pts -2 45 PIM
2006-07 PIT 81 GP 14G 45 A 59 Pts +9 77 PIM
2005-06 PIT 68 GP 6G 32A 38 Pts -7 85 PIM
Here is the boiled down deal with Whitney. When he broke into the league with Pittsburgh, he collected mad second assists, scored at an above average pace for a defenseman and used to hit. This all went down on a young gun team of Penguins and he was able to coast along with an offensively gifted team.
Then he stopped hitting, scoring and collecting points and got dealt to Anaheim late last year.
Then the Ducks took a look at him doing less and less and dealt him to the Oilers for one of the better offensive defensemen in the game in Visnovsky. Even on the worst team in the NHL (and possibly the AHL) Visnovsky has been able to contribute regularly this season and was arguably one of the only positives on the team.
This trade is a salary dump – plain and simple – and for 1.6 million less per season it wasn’t even a good one in that regard. The Oilers are still paying 4 million for a substantially worse defenseman that they have up for another 3 seasons to come.
Welcome to the Oilers Tom Gilbert II.
INSULT NUMBER TWO
Steve Staios to the Calgary Flames for defenceman Aaron Johnson and a third round draft pick.
Steve Staios, Assistant Captain and former folk hero with 99% of Edmontonians, has exactly one year left on his contract but was moved to the Calgary Flames of all teams to save $2.7 million dollars on a team that will still be incapable of even hoping to be .500 next year. Remember when trading within your Conference or Division was considered unwise? Remember when deals with the Flames were rarer than a 2010 Oilers victory? All these rules seem to have gone out the window now.
It’s as though the Oilers head office have a secret list of "the hell we can put our fan base though in a 6 year period" and they are just checking off each item as fast as they can.
Really Tambellini? Staios to the Flames huh? Are there any insults left you can hurl in our collective direction?
We aren’t going to even bother looking at Aaron Johnson’s career stats. Know why? Cause he sucks and we don’t care. And as he is a UFA at the end of the season hopefully he hits the dusty trail as quickly as he arrived.
HERE IS WHAT WE DON’T UNDERSTAND
As crappy as the Oilers have been, they have at least been able to lay claim to a decent – albeit expensive – defensive corps. It has been one of the few bright spots on this team that justice and time have forgotten. But now with the departures of Lubo, Staios and Grebs, coupled with the wonderfully timed season ending hand infection suffered by Sheldon Souray, this leaves the Oilers with the following defenseman:
Whitney – Gilbert
Smid – Studwick
JUNK – JUNK
JUNK
This could be somehow overlooked if by some miracle the holes on the team had actually been plugged as a result of the decimation of our defensive corps. Defensive forward anyone? Nope. Physical forward or d-man capable of hardening up this butter soft lineup? Nope. The ever elusive player capable of winning faceoffs on a regular basis? Crickets. A mercy trade for our shell shocked Captain? Nein. A goalie to plug in behind Glug Glug Ripoffibulin and the backup AHL goaltending duo? No.
How can we have even less hope after the trade deadline? It boggles the mind.
We are really rollin’ now.
Hey Wanye, you spelled Strudwick wrong in your defensive pairings. It's spelled J U N K.
I'm excited honestly, I heard Quinn is gonna get the 6th round pick from Anaheim to suit up and play defense.
I don't think I'll ever understand people's reactions to days like this. What did you expect? Did you really think 1pm was going to roll around, and we were going to be well on our way through the rebuilding process?
Face it folks, we're in this for the long haul. This isn't something that was going to get fixed today.. it's not going to get fixed this off season… we'll probably still be shaking our fists in frustration NEXT off season. If rebuilds were painless, do you think there'd ever be any hesitation? The minute a team was out of the playoff race, GM's would just detonate.
Pittsburgh drafted Crosby with their first round pick. They proceeded to finish dead last that season with a Rookie who put up a 100+ point season. Did you think that we were going to bust out of this one and be playoff bound next season? Give your head a shake. I'd bet dollars to donuts the fans in Chicago weren't exactly ready to hand the key to the city over to their GM either while they wallowed through one piss poor season after another and watched good players get parted out for crap and picks.
We had huge cap problems going in to the deadline day with some key contracts coming to bear on us July 1st. Bitch and moan about the lack of return on Viz all you want, we need the money to sign our young guys more than we need someone who's going to need a walker and portable air tank by the time we're ready to compete.
And Staios? Who cares WHERE he goes so long as he's gone. Nothing but love for the guy, but that 2.7 mil is gonna be mighty handy when Gagner, Cogs and Brule are sitting at the negotiation table this summer. Not to mention we get another pick (Guess what rebuilding teams need? PICKS!)
You guys better get used to this. If Player X's age is >30, they'll likely be shipped for whatever we can get for them.
More to the point, if you think Tambo is going to start kicking doors down to fill all our holes now, rather than in the off season, you should probably look around your room for a paint can with a loose lid or something; there's some fumes doing damage to yer brain. Why trade now for something that might be attainable for free on the FA Market in the off season. (And to hell with this "Edmonton can't sign anyone on the FA Market" nonsense. If that's the case, we're screwed no matter what GM is at the helm, because if you can't even attract some gritty PKers and a decent face off man through the FA, this team will never be complete.)
One would think Tambo would have signed those gritty Pkers and a decent face off man last summer. Do you really think Gagne and Brule and Cogs will be getting huge increases in pay ? Making a trade to fill holes won't have hurt the fall for Hall. Tambo created the hole we have with Pk by trading Broz ( can't spell his name). I'm not saying he would have made the diffence but that trade never helped. I think your can of paint is almost empty if you think we can attract UFA's. They offered Hossa 80million enough said.
Thanks for the heads up, I've cracked a new can to keep the good times rolling.
And yes, one would think. I'm not sold that he's got a master plan and things will all pan out for the best, but I'm hoping against hope that last season he was simply delusional and thought this team could compete with a simple coaching change.
This at the very least shows he's willing to start a rebuild.
As for the UFA's, as I said, if Edmonton literally cannot attract any UFA's, then what's the point in even bitching? The team is screwed. You can't build a team purely from Drafting and Trading, you just can't. It doesn't matter if we have Tambo, or a GM that comes from a genetic soup that includes Steve Yzerman, Scotty Bowman and Jesus Christ. If UFA's are out of the question, so is fielding a competitive team. PERIOD.
I mean, if this is the logic we're holding to, were you hoping Tambo could plug ALL the holes at once by trading Lubo? Give me a break. At best he might have been able to fill one. And then what? Since we can't sign any UFA's, we just can't fill the rest?
So give me your best case scenario here. Let's pretend that through some wheeling and dealing magic, Tambo traded Lubo and got us say… a solid PKer who can take face-offs and a draft pick. What then? By your assumption, no hole can be filled by UFA's, so how does Tambo fill all the other holes, as well as the new hole that's been created by trading away one of the only decent defensemen on a terrible Defensive team?
LOL. I just grabbed another can also. I think they could trade some picks or players to fill the holes. I think they can get FA but not big names which we probably don't need at this point. I still think Lubo was worth more then Whitney and a 6th round pick but I'm just a disappointed fan like the rest of us. New hole created in defense maybe draft Fowlar not sure. Offensive dman are hard to get it seems like every team want's one. May be a trade with the leafs for Kaberla ( spelling). I guess we will all have to wait till the draft and July 1st. My fingers are crossed. At least next season I won't expect the team to make the playoffs.
I like this guy. You can come over and hang with me and Kevin in the bat cave anytime!
Though I disagree with every single concept you raise here, I will say that this is probably one of the best takes on the entire Oilers scenario that I have read this year.
I agree with what your saying however what I don't understand is if "we're in this for the long haul" why is cap space for next year so important?
I like the Staios trade and think we lost the grebesckov trade but was ok with it. However, trading you best player for $1.6 mil in cap space at this point in time does not make any sence to me. What was the rush to trade Visnosky? I'm not opposed to trading him, but wouldn't waiting until the summer when more teams have the cap room to make an offer be the better option to maximize the return.
The Oilers must know something about Whitney I don't which is likely because they have a knack for finding and developing defensemen (well they did until this year)
Maybe they just wanted to keep at least one Olympian on the roster so fans in Edmonton can at least pretend they are cheering for an NHL team.
Your overating Visnovsky. He has all of 4 more points than Whitney, is several years older, costs more, is poor defensively and is smaller. Look at what the talking heads on the sports shows outside of Edmonton are saying. We didnt lose this deal, they all seem to think it was a good deal for both sides. The most we would have got in the offseason is bumping that 6th round pick up to a 2nd or 3rd but there's the chance the deal doesnt go through.
You're right it's a good deal in the fact that we cashed in an asset that realistically wasn't going to be around long enough to help, however I think alot of people are going to be dissapointed in Whitney, Ducks/Pens fans have never spoken overly high on the guy. He's soft like Lubo but he doesn't have the wheels to make up for his mistakes like Lubo does.
I think the biggest knock on the trade is: Their was no reason to deal him now (especially last minute) he could have been saved for the draft and potentially gotten more/a more appropriet fit.
I think the problem with waiting is finding the right fit. Whitney pretty much replaces Vis and he's cheaper and younger. Would we be able to find a team that wanted to commit that much cap space for 3 seasons? What would we have to take back to make it happen? It's tough to say that there would have been a better deal out there if we waited for the summer.
Whitney is young enough that with the right coaching he still could turn into something pretty good.
It is tought to say, but why rush a last minute deal when you don't have to.
If you think Whitney is about as good as your going to get then why wait? Are we just holding out to bump the draft choice up a bit and if so is it really worth possibly souring the deal? What if Anaheim moves on to Kaberle come summer time where do we go then?
You don't see the problem with cross comparing points genrated while playing with the Oilers vs points generated while playing with the Ducks? Visnovsky is still a top 20 defencemen in this league… Whitney is not.
Holy cow do I ever feel good about the decision to never buy a Limp Bizkit album ever. I think Rollin' is just a square dance for White Trash suburbanite rednecks.
Now swing your partner round and round, and breathe right in, and breathe right out. Now put your hands up, and put your hands down. Tell me ya'll, what are you going to do now? Let's keep rollin' now… dosey-doe…
Newspaper headline: Tambo makes Kevin Lowe look like a GENIUS.
I actually have no problem with the Staios trade, ans also wish him the best. He was all class. But the Vish deal, to me, makes no sense. Why not wait, surely we could have got more at the draft? wow, if this year sucked, can you imagine next year?