Souray Leaving Edmonton not a Matter of “If” but “When”

If anyone in the NHL is in the market for a disgruntled, expensive, washed-up, injury-ridden, about-as-effective-as-a-knife-in-a-gunfight power-play quarterback, there has never been a better time to snatch up Edmonton Oilers defenseman Sheldon Souray.

As enticing an opportunity as that sounds, there is much more than meets the eye to the Souray saga. Now that the Ilya Kovalchuk melodrama is behind fans (relatively speaking), attention has turned to the last-place Oilers and their attempts to make Souray and his oversized $5.4-million salary-cap hit someone else’s problem. However, a rather unforeseen twist of fate has apparently led to a downturn in the number of masochistic general managers looking to lose their jobs.

Gone, it would seem, are the Mike Milburys of the league, who once gave up Jason Spezza (in draft-pick form) and Zdeno Chara for Alexei Yashin... who once traded Roberto Luongo AND Olli Jokinen for Mark Parrish and Oleg Kvasha. Gone too is former Edmonton GM Kevin Lowe, but that’s a story for another day. Today, though, comes news that the Oilers do not want Souray at training camp, clearly considering him a potential distraction as a result of comments he made back in April. Most notably, he accused the team of prodding him into playing despite his having sustained injuries that would have kept him out of the line-up on other teams.

If true, hockey fans can certainly forgive the Oilers for what clearly amounts to an innocent case of mistaken identity: mistaking Souray for a hockey player, after he signed a contract much to that effect a few years ago. From Souray’s perspective, you can see where the confusion would set in, with his having spent half his time as an Oiler out of uniform and injured.

After spending 102 of a possible 246 games injured, one would have had to at least believe he’d have gotten kind of healthy? But, as fate would have it, no. A broken Souray, the incredible, unhealing man, if you will, was allegedly forced to come to the rescue of a team so far out of the playoff race that it was being lapped by the horrid Toronto Maple Leafs. Please. Like he could have helped if he wanted to.

"Geez. That's going to hurt in the morning... hurt me. Ouch."

Whatever ego-stroking conversations took place behind closed doors between the Oilers and Souray, in which Souray was clearly falsely led to believe that he was the team’s saviour, one has to believe in turn that his time with the Oilers is over. Kurtis Foster was brought in during the off-season to help man the point on the power play, which is the only use Souray, when healthy, serves. It is very much an iconic move and an ironic at that that the Oilers turned to Foster, considering how he once missed nearly an entire calendar year with a broken leg.

The Oilers are essentially replacing one player that has never been able to put his injury-riddled past completely behind him with one that was nominated for the Bill Masterton Memorial Trophy last year as a nod to his career-high 42 points notched just one season after missing 72 games with the broken leg. It’s clear who the more valuable player between the two is, but if any additional help was needed: Foster only has a cap hit of $1.8 million.

Yes, Souray may be buried in the minors. Yes, there are even rumours of a salary swap between the Oilers and the New York Rangers, in which Wade Redden and his $6.5-million cap hit would be sent Edmonton’s way, but no one is expecting to come out of that deal a winner, just slightly less of a loser. Considering these are two non-playoff teams, one finishing dead-last in the league last year and one notorious for throwing money at its problems until they’re unrecognizably covered in green, they’ve each got an uphill battle back to respectability ahead of them. None compares to that of Souray, despite his bank-account balance, who along with his oft-injured and overpaid status has now earned the reputation of a cancer.

One gets the sense that the Oilers and Souray are a match made in heaven and that if someone brave enough were able to trick him and management into a room, lock them in, and throw away the key for 24 hours, they could make serious headway towards resolving their differences. Souray is from Alberta, which makes Edmonton, despite the cold, snow, and Hillary Duff (now that she’s married to native Mike Comrie) a pretty favourable destination. Conversely, the Oilers are a young team that could use a leadership presence, even if all Souray can teach his teammates is what not to do in order to avoid injuries to every single body part over the course of a career.

Ideally, the Oilers and Souray would be able to put this whole ugly incident behind them, he would play for the team, score 30 goals, help to push the team into the playoffs, and all would be right in the world. Unfortunately, though, everyone knows every bit of that fairy-tale scenario is unlikely. The Oilers are not a playoff team. Souray has never scored more than 26 goals in a season and he won’t score 30 now, as a battered and bruised defenseman in his mid-30s. Over three seasons in Edmonton, he’s only played in 144 games. And, finally, there’s little chance the Oilers would attempt to reconcile with a player, for which they have no practical use on the ice. Unfortunately for Souray, 29 other teams feel similarly.