http://www.hfboards.com/showthread.php?t=220401
"Work" is in the eye of the beholder, no?
"We" get all dizzy when we hear that Somebody We Know is reading here; do we really want SWK saying "what a bunch of idiots, it's just like reading the Sun only without a spellchecker and the Sunshine Girl"?
As you say, this isn't a pro journal or live TV, so perhaps it's not a requirement to act professionally - but speaking for myself, I take more seriously those who do act their age, and not their shoe size.
OK, enough of that.
Back on-topic, your original post was bang-on, I think. We can't expect Lowe to be able to get a huge return, or much of anything, for players that aren't performing, get paid too much, or don't contribute anything that somebody else could. Ie, as much as I like Reasoner, he's not going to bring much past a third round pick in a trade, I would imagine. He doesn't have the value he did when the Weight trade was made. He's one of many players that's more valuable to the Oilers than he would be anywhere else, quite simply because most teams have a Reasoner already; why would they want two? Torres probably has value, but he's a bit of an unknown quantity: is he a sparkplug who can score, or is he a streaky goalscorer who can hit, or something else entirely? Joe Mullen or Jarome Iginla?
As much as "we" agree that Ulanov's time is likely gone, who'd take him in trade?
OK, so nobody would really want an Oilers roster player that Lowe wouldn't be crucified for trading (Smyth, Hemsky, etc). The next common thing to suggest is picks + one of the previous class of player = Joe Thornton. I have to agree with something somebody said a couple of times previous that this subject was raised: the NHL is not an NHL simulator. As much as that might work in EHM or NHL2k6, it's just plain not that easy in real life.
For myself, I'm relatively happy with the current roster; it occurred to me yesterday that I was... actually a bit upset to read the writeup of the Colorado game, and after a few moments thought, I realized that was because I've gotten used to reading about wins. Time warp to, say, 11 or 12 years ago: "Weight scored a goal and registered an assist on a goal by Steven Rice as the Oilers lost 7-2 to the Dallas Stars. Modano potted 4 on a hapless Joaqin Gage." That wouldn't have surprised much of anybody who was following the team at the time.
Our standards are much higher now than they were then - even for those of us who remember the crushing disappointment of 1983, and the wild celebration of 1984. We expect our team to win. More than it loses. A lot more. .500 isn't good enough; we want .750. (Some want perfection.) So when the team stinks it up - which will happen, pros or not, winners or not - there's demands for heads to roll.
Me, I'm mostly just grateful that we can talk about players like Marty Reasoner or Radek Dvorak as a "useful utility guy", somebody like Fernando Pisani as "somebody who doesn't do any one thing well, but doesn't make many mistakes and somehow is in the right place more often than not", rather than debating whether it should be Brad Winchester or Dan Baum centering Ryan Smyth and Georges Laraque. I'm happy that when it turned out that Michael Peca can not, in fact, score 25 goals, that MacT had the flexibility to go "oh well, I know he can check, so let's line him up against the Sedins and Carter" instead of trying to use a sledge to hammer a screw into a cement block.
For the first time in a long time, we can not only expect the Oilers to make the playoffs - and have a hope of winning - we can expect the same thing for the next 4-5 years at least. It feels good.


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