NHL Trade deadline day

Ryan Smyth to the Oilers for two B-level (at best) prospects and a (what would appear to be) useless first-round pick in a shallow draft.

Obviously I'm not an NHL General Manager (or anywhere close to resembling one) but to my untrained eye the biggest trade of today's NHL trade deadline day makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. 5 or 6 years ago in the pre-salary cap days of the NHL I could look at this and chalk it up to a necessary evil in an unbalanced system. But wasn't the new CBA supposed to allow small-market teams like Edmonton to keep their marquee players?

Ryan Smyth is the most popular Oiler since the days of Messier and Gretzky. His popularity goes beyond just Oiler fans. He embodies the type of player that every Canadian hockey fan can easily find themselves rooting for.

He's the face of the Oilers; an excellent spokesman for the team and the league as a whole; he's a blue-collar worker who should have been the team's captain for the past couple years. He embodies everything that is good about hockey in Canada.

Sure he was going to command a high price with this next (and probably his last) contract but Smyth is one of the few players in the league who I would say is worth every penny (I'd put him in a group with the likes of Sidney Crosby, Martin Brodeur, Jarome Iginla, and Scott Niedermyer).

So instead of ponying up and giving Ryan what he deserves, Kevin Lowe ships him off to NHL Siberia where he'll get to suit up with the New York Islanders for the last month of the season. Certainly this gives the Islanders a significant boost towards the postseason but if I'm any NHL free agent looking at the situation in Edmonton I'm saying to myself there's no way I'm going to Edmonton if that's how they treat their franchise players.

Say what you want about this being purely a business decision. My take is that if this was just a business decision than surely there had to be better offers out there than what Kevin Lowe accepted from the Isles.

I feel bad for Smyth. If he was going to get traded then this is a player who deserved to go to a market that will truly appreciate his workmanlike effort. Instead he'll get to play in front of what, 25-30 people each night in Long Island (20 of which are probably paid by Charles Wang to come in and fill some seats). He should be headed to Detroit, or Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, Pittsburgh or a dozen other teams that would give him a better than decent shot at doing something special.

I feel bad for the faithful fans in Edmonton as well. They proved last year that they are some of the best fans in the game and they deserve more than Robert Nielsen, Ryan O'Marra and a first-round pick. This is a sad day for Oilers fans. At least the Gretzky trade brought some decent players back in return.

So now the face of your organization is who? Ales Hemsky? Jarret Stoll? Raffi Torres?

This is a terrible trade for the Oilers and a terrible trade for hockey in general.