The Two-Line Pass

When you’re around NHL players a lot, you find out that there are indeed cities, teams and individual players that they just don’t like. The perception that fans can get is sometimes overblown (most guys in the NHL don’t really mind Sean Avery, for example), and sometimes it’s spot-on.

And if you ever considered that Chris Pronger might have really, really hated his time in Edmonton, but never had confirmation, don’t worry. Pronger has now confirmed that he really, really hated his time in Edmonton.

In an otherwise bland Q&A with the Orange County Register (even their website suffers from “The OC” disorder), Pronger offered this gem.

Q: Are there teams you can’t stand to play?

A: You mean, like, I want to puke when I see their players? There’s quite a few of those in the league … there’s a number of cities you want to get in and out. Edmonton’s one of them.

I guarantee that the much-heralded Oilogosphere will be positively seething after this one. Ingrates, all of them. Think about it like this: GETTING Pronger cost almost nothing. Jeff Woywitka, Eric Brewer and Doug Lynch isn’t too bad a price. WITH Pronger, Edmonton was within a Dwayne Roloson injury of winning the Cup. And OFFLOADING Pronger yielded a very good young defenseman in Ladislav Smid, Joffrey Lupul, a first-round pick in 2007 and 2008, and a 2008 second-round pick (which later went to the Islanders in the Ryan Smyth trade).

Lupul plus an aging Jason Smith were eventually traded to Philadelphia for Geoff Sanderson, Joni Pitkanen, and a third-round pick. Pitkanen, in turn, was flipped to Carolina for Erik Cole.

This was the net result of all those trades.

Out:

• Anaheim’s 2007 first-round pick (Nick Ross to Phoenix)
• Edmonton’s 2007 second-round pick (Joel Gistedt)
• Jeff Woywitka, Eric Brewer, Doug Lynch (to St. Louis)
• Jason Smith

In:

• Dallas’ 2007 first-round pick, from Phoenix (Riley Nash)
• Ladislav Smid
• Erik Cole
• Anaheim’s 2008 first-round pick (Jordan Eberle)
• A Cup run

Believe me, you guys made out okay there, so just shut up already about Chris Pronger.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 19th, 2008 at 2:02 pm and is filed under Sum-sum-summertime. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.