Blue Jackets Fans Should Start Singing the Blues and Get Fitted for Strait Jackets

It’s an interesting conundrum, but as much as time will tell whether or not Columbus Blue Jackets goalie Steve Mason was just a flash in the pan, time is no longer a luxury which his team has in abundance.

The Jackets signed Mason to a two-year contract extension on Monday, with him earning $2.6 million in the first year and $3.6 million in the second. He is currently earning $765,000. The signing is a curious one, not because Mason is seemingly being rewarded for seriously underachieving this past year, but because it comprises an actual move by team management in this, its summer of not-so discontent, at least in regard to its mediocre roster.

Looking at what the Jackets have accomplished this off-season, it makes one wonder why general manager Scott Howson has a job... again, not because he has done anything inherently detrimental to his team, but because he hasn’t done anything at all. Then again, a closer look will show that even if he is being paid for nothing his lacking performance more likely reflects the organization’s faulty corporate culture. One playoff appearance (and no playoff wins) in nine seasons is not exactly a glowing return on investment.

Sure, Howson did pick up forward Ethan Moreau off waivers from the Edmonton Oilers, but, when the Oilers don’t even want a player, it’s probably a sign to stay away (which is good advice pertaining to Sheldon Souray as well). And, yes, restricted-free-agent Anton Stralman, who led all defensemen on the team in scoring, was re-signed as well, but that’s more evidence of anyone being able to score some points for lack of a decent alternative. Even Souray would be a better option. I mean, forget the Oilers... Stralman’s a Toronto Maple Leafs castoff for crying out loud.

All in all, it was a summer of lateral moves if anything, and in the case of Ken Hitchcock being re-hired as a special adviser, lateral moves backwards. When the team finished fourth-last in the entire NHL last year, the only logical explanation is that management thinks some weird golf-scoring system has been implemented in the standings.

Maybe Howson wants to give new head coach Scott Arniel a chance to evaluate his players himself before making any moves, which may sound fair... until one realizes that there’s only so much good to be found in a locker room full of hand-me-down, second-class players that are more used to being coddled than they are actually competing. 

For example: Rick Nash, who, next to Marian Hossa, is probably the most overrated player in the league. His $7.8-million salary indicates that he’s a superstar, when, in reality, he isn’t even a point-per game player. He should instead turn his attention to a second career as a lookalike to the also overrated Eric Gagne of Los Angeles Dodgers fame. He might be better at that.

"C'mon! He looks like Clark Kent more than anything! And I'm hardly Superman!"

Then there’s Nikita Filatov, who was reportedly so enamoured with the prospect of playing in North America and competing for the Stanley Cup as an undrafted prospect that he got the green light to go back to Russia and play in the KHL last year after just eight games as a Jacket. Now that he’s back and apparently prepared to fight for a roster spot, the only question is: how long until he finally opts against a career in hockey altogether and decides to pursue his actual calling as a silver-tongued, soothsaying politician?

"The joke's on them! Wait until they find out what they paid for!"

Finally, what about Mike Commodore, the highest-paid defenseman on the team with a salary of $3.8 million this year? Apparently that kind of green only buys you a fringe 20-point-per-season defenseman. No wonder he can’t afford any clothes.

When defenseman Kris Russell, the team’s best hope at a legitimate number-one defenseman sometime down the road, goes down with a sprained knee in training camp, you have to know that even luck isn’t on your side. That’s about the only thing that would have given the team’s fan base some false hope this season.

Mason may end up bouncing back from his sophomore slump, but unless Columbus trades in their blue jackets for angel wings, it won’t make a difference. The team in front of him is too weak to withstand a wind of change let alone win him some games. This will be the team’s 10^th season, and barring a miracle upswing on the ice and in attendance figures, one has to wonder how many more the Jackets will survive in the hockey hotbed of Columbus.

Time is relative, and it doesn’t take an Albert Einstein to realize that it’s not on the team’s side. In fact, it’s not a matter of if but when they leave... just as it is with them eventually getting mathematically eliminated from playoff contention this season. The best guess is sometime in December.

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.

Khabibulin DUI Epitomizes Oilers' Wayward Management

Khabby should have taken a cabby one night last February, evidenced by his 30-day jail sentence

At its very core, Edmonton Oilers goalie Nikolai Khabibulin’s driving-under-the-influence charge is a pathetic cry for attention. “Pathetic” is a fitting adjective given that it also best describes the Oil as whole.

There are few other ways to describe a team that ended last season as the worst in the league, a team that actually had playoff aspirations last October, a team that only has itself to blame for its fall from grace from its Stanley Cup Finals appearance in 2006.

Take Khabibulin for instance. Despite being a rather golden-ageish 36 last summer, Edmonton for some reason decided to sign the unrestricted free agent to a four-year, $15-million deal, which might just take him directly to death’s door by contract’s end. And all the Oilers got in return for their altruistic donation of a hefty retirement package was a season in which Khabibulin was plagued by back pains. Management really should have known better than to sign a player whose nickname is based on a physical barrier that got torn down 21 years ago. And then of course there was the DUI last February.

Another example is perennial underachiever Dustin Penner, who led the team in scoring last year... Dustin Friggin’ Penner, the same player that former general manager Kevin Lowe thought had superstar potential and signed to an ill-thought-out $4.25-million-per-season offer sheet in 2007. The same player that was responsible for the all-out war between Brian Burke and Kevin Lowe and maybe even Lowe’s increasingly apparent and uncomely hair loss as a result. The same player that has Edmonton fans aching for 64-year-old children’s entertainer Fred to take his place. The same overpaid player that, despite ending the season with a career-high 63 points, actually had 38 points in just 36 games as late as last December.

Needless to say, Dustin Penner is not familiar with the concept of a strong finish and, as such, no half-decent team should claim Dustin Penner as its best player.

Let’s move on to defenseman Sheldon Souray, who Lowe, without a gun shoved in his mouth I might add, also signed in 2007 to an insane five-year contract. Souray, now stuck in potentially perpetual limbo, is slated to earn $4.5 million this year in the minors because it’s only become apparent now to management that he’s injury-prone and not worth the price of the equipment he needs to wear walking from the house to the car every morning. Rumour has it that he’s so injury-prone that he tore a muscle looking at himself in a mirror after Access Hollywood named him the sexiest player in the league in 2003. His body has just never learnt to properly accommodate his larger head in the years that followed.

Despite all this, the Oilers do have the backbone of a decent team, but one only set to be ready a few years down the road, once the Souray, Penner, Khabibulin, and the six-year, $33-million Shawn Horcoff (don’t think we forgot about him) contracts run their course. This past off-season, current gm Steve Tambellini made a move so rare in Edmonton, the papers actually ran the story a day late just to double check their sources. But it was true; he’d signed defenseman Kurtis Foster to a fiscally responsible two-year, $3.6-million contract.

Should Foster somehow stay beyond the two years, the Oilers’ back-end, also comprising young stars Tom Gilbert and Ryan Whitney, has a realistic chance to dominate the league. Ditto for the team’s forward lines, which in a few years will likely feature by-then-stars Jordan Eberle, Magnus Paajarvi, and recent number-one-pick Taylor Hall. Complemented by current stars Ales Hemsky and Sam Gagner, the trio can realistically help the team make the post-season in three-to-five years, but not sooner.

To all those thinking the Oilers suddenly stand a chance at a Stanley Cup thanks to the injection of youthful exuberance and skill, here’s a reality check: Eberle is 20, Paajarvi 19, and Hall 18. Never before has a team made up primarily of teenagers been able to compete against other NHL teams.

Just look to the 1979-80 Oilers for proof, a team that boasted 19-year-olds Wayne Gretzky and Mark Messier and a 20-year-old Jarri Kurri among others. They ended the season with a 29-35-16 record and just barely made the playoffs. And I hate to break it to all the overly optimistic Oilers fans out there, but Paajarvi is no Kurri, Eberle no Messier, and Hall no Gretzky.

Yes, the Oilers will be a good team eventually, but the pathetic part is that on any given day every other mediocre team in the league is just a few moves away from respectability. It all depends on management’s vision and where they see the team heading. Since 2006, the Oilers’ strategy has been to run the team into the ground in hopes of striking oil. Only time will tell if they have a contender waiting in the wings or not.

Maybe give it a few years and the debate can be revisited, but for now the Oilers have to figure out how to deal with Khabibulin. Logic dictates that Khabibulin, who appealed his 30-day prison sentence on Tuesday, will still play for the Oilers this season. Khabibulin should probably just have accepted his punishment, because, in playing even 30 days less for the Oilers, it will likely amount to a much better time.