Another NHL trade deadline has come and gone. Unfortunately, I didn’t come down with the Trade Deadline flu, so I spent the entire day at work. In between working very, very, very hard at the Triangle News, I could take a couple milli-seconds to check out Twitter to get the latest trades and rumours from the TSN crew and some of the Edmonton area journalists who were in the know.
There was not a whole lot of excitement this year. It does seem like the trade deadline gets less exciting every year. The long term contracts that are handed out sure make it more difficult to move those type of players. Although, Columbus found a sucker in Los Angeles to take Jeff Carter’s 11 year deal off their hands. And the biggest deal of the day was supposed to be Blue Jackets’ Rick Nash, but again, that didn’t amount to much of anything.
For me, of course, the biggest deal of the day was when the Oilers acquired defenseman Nick Schultz from the Minnesota Wild for fellow defenseman Tom Gilbert. My first reaction was that I thought this was a great deal for the team. The development of young Oilers’ defender Jeff Petry made Gilbert expendable. The Oilers have a hard time keeping the puck out of the net and this new acquisition should help that. I’m starting to think they are going to have to find a franchise goalie. I just don’t think Dubnyk is the long term answer. Anyways, Schultz is a great defensive defenseman and sounds like he’s a great character guy to have in the locker room as well. Apparently, his former Wild teammates were quite upset that he was traded. Any time you can add a good old Saskatchewan boy to the team, that can’t be a bad thing either.
Like I said, I thought this was great deal until I decided to check out the Oilers message board on hfboards.com. Wow, I could not believe the reaction of the fans. You would have thought we just traded Nik Lindstrom for Schultz. Granted, Gilbert has had a much better season this year, but last year, we would have had a hard time to give him away with his $4 million salary. I guess some fans like to hate on Oilers management no matter what they do. Although, it’s still hard to forgive them for the Shawn Horcoff contract. That one still hurts.
I guess It’s a good thing I’m smarter than the average Oilers fan.
A really strange thing happened to me on Twitter last week. I tweeted about the trade of Schultz to the Oilers. A few minutes later a man replied to my tweet claiming to be a Rabbi from Israel. He asked myself and the Oilers to convert over to his religion. The Oilers Twitter account was mentioned in the reply, but somehow I don’t think they responded. Me, on the other hand, I couldn’t help but say something. There is no way I can tell you what my response was, I’ll just say it was highly inappropriate and I’ll probably pay for it later.
Although, later that night I did win the 50/50 draw at the midget game. I won’t tell you how much, but it was just slighlty lower than the 50/50 draws at the World Junior games this past year in Edmonton and Calgary.
It was great to see my nephew, Jordan, play hockey for the first time here in Coronach. He plays for the Quad Town Rebels and even though they got the crap beat out them, it was nice to see him mix up at the end of the game. It’s nice to know his Dad’s temper hasn’t been lost on him. Just kidding Mike, but not really.
