It's a good thing haute culture does not consider internet sources to be relevent, since there's nothing more frustrating than not being able to find an exact article to use in your blog. Especially us sports guys, reading articles every day and having those random facts linger in the back of our minds awaiting a trigger word to activate them. We're like Manchurian candidates armed only with a few selective stats and the volume of our own voices.
The reason this springs to mind is because of rumors that Dick Tarnstrom is becoming more likely to be traded from the Oilers. With more healthy defencemen returning to the lineup and the emergence of Tom Gilbert, it would seem that Dick could be moved for, well, something. The Oilers need scoring and can't trade anything to get it. Torres is hurt for a while, maybe gone for the year. Stoll I don't think will go because he was their best player last year until he got hurt, kills penalties, blocks shots, wins faceoffs (best on the Oilers this year, 29th in the league at 52.6. Last year he was 9th at 55.6), and, as I've maintained since they drafted him, is captain material. Frankly, this team cannot afford to trade away any more leadership. Looking at the Leadership Exodus out of Edmonton since the end of 2006 is pretty ugly.
Back to Dick. I'm sure I read somewhere (hence the initial comments) that the reason he chose to come back to Edmonton for his NHL return was that his daughter has a medical condition and Edmonton's medical facilities would be the best place for her. So really, this isn't a trade one wants to see from a human perspective. Unless they package him with Stoll they won't get much for him straight up anyways (even packaging with Stoll you're trading away an impending UFA at $2 million and an impending RFA at $2.2 million. The only teams that would go for it are top teams looking for depth. You won't get roster players back and Stoll and Tarnstrom won't yield first round picks, so why bother). You can't trade him just to move salary because this team still thinks it's playoff-bound, which is certainly possible given their position right now and getting healthier (Disclosure: I picked them to finish in 8th because I'm a big fat homer). Besides, the only way this team makes the playoffs is with both those players healthy and playing to their potential. Before getting hurt, Tarnstrom was the Oilers' best defenseman and Stoll is still capable of pulling his game together and being a secondary scoring threat, both even-strength and on the powerplay. If the team falls off then of course things change, but trading Tarnstrom is just a bad idea for both hockey and PR reasons. Brian Burke made the bright point after trading Andy MacDonald, saying that trading recently-signed Mattieu Schneider (which was widely predicted) probably isn't a good way to attract UFA's in the future. Edmonton may be a lot of things to the rest of the league's players, but with the high turnover rate the last few years the Oilers don't need to create the kind of impression Burke was smart enough to avoid.
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