Quote:
Originally Posted by Locke
Remember the days when the Calgary Flames and Edmonton Oilers just didnt do business together?
At all. Ever.
Just on principle.
Those were fine days.
My main concern is that dealing with Edmonton is like trading hockey cards with your slow little brother.
He knows he has one good card and thinks it make the rest of his crappy cards better, but you really dont want any of them.
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While I wholeheartedly agree with having anything to do with the Oilers at any point, there is something even more satisfying in seeing players, identified by many around the league as good players out of junior or otherwise, get forced or naively going to Edmonton, getting all their free will and skill kicked out of them due to overall current and historical organizational incompetentence and media bluster, which has put them in that position, leave, and succeed like they were expected to.
Dubnyk, Schultz, Hall are some of the originals. But even smaller roles like Strome last year get tossed away like bathwater, crapped on by the team through the media, made worse because of the media whipping the fans up, but went on to have a decent year.
Other GMs are realizing what we've said all along. Edmonton is no good. Not the players, but the organization and the media who places such high expectations on players who don't deserve them, and then tear into players when those expectations aren't meant, turning those decent players into sacks of crap, confidence wise. Other GMs are now plucking players out of that situation for cheap prices, or like Rieder, getting a player for the league minimum after one bad season in an organization that is 80% to blame for that bad season. The players, depending on their own mental makeup and how much the Edmonton experience has damaged them, can bounce right back to where they were trending to be, sooner than later and GMs realize that they can get a value price for a decent player.
Again, it's anywhere but Edmonton, and going to any NHL organization, and players can get back to being part of a normal organization, and back to a regular hockey player, with the skills that got them to the NHL in the first place.