Souray Wants Out. Who's Right and Who's Wrong? The Real Losers In All of This is the Team

This is a picture of a time when Souray was much happier. The recent news in Edmonton suggests we won't see this kind of expression on Souray's face until he's left the Oilers organization.

It isn't a secret, that the plan is to move Souray, and maybe he knows this and is a tad bent out of shape about it, but when he recently talked to reporters, he held nothing back and did little to represent the type of character many fans thought had team captain material written all over it.

"Yes, I do want a trade." "It’s not a players thing. It’s not a fans thing or a city thing. It’s a management thing," Souray said. "They’ve given up on me, and it’s a two-way street.

"I don’t talk to anyone (in management) and I don’t expect to when I check out of here," said Souray. "I don’t really need to talk to them. There isn’t anything to say.

"Management has soured on me, and I’ve soured on them," he continued. "The fans are great, they’ve accepted me here, I see the jerseys in the stands. I couldn’t have pictured a more opposite vision of what my experience here would be like. What the organization here would be like, overall."

In reference to his injured history as an Oiler,"Maybe they think I’m a black sheep," Souray said. "But it’s not about me — it wouldn’t matter who it happened to. You’d think someone would want to check on the asset, wouldn’t you? "The Oilers always prided themselves in being a family. Whatever happened to that? I haven’t talked to (Tambellini) since mid-January."

Then to add insult to injury, he went to an unspoken place. He brought up an unspoken name. He took the last dig, delivered the last low blow, the worst parting shot he could have probably thought of.

"I still have two years left on my contract. I made a commitment to come here when other guys wouldn’t," he said. "But you talk about Prongs (Chris Pronger) and guys like that, and it should raise an eyebrow when players who leave town are skipping out with a smile on their face."

My thoughts to Souray are this...

These are likely all fair comments. But this is the type of stuff that should have been left on Kevin Lowe and Steve Tambellini's voice mails instead of supplied to the media for the city, 29 other GM's and a few hundred other players to hear.

Whether management dropped the ball here or not (and they likely did if it's true no one has even bothered to call Souray since mid-January), shut your mouth and keep it behind closed doors. The fans that you say you have so much love for, are now going to turn on you faster than you can imagine and you've essentially put this team in a negative position going forward.

Maybe that was Souray's plan.

Souray described in great detail all of the things he feels management did to him that were out of line, including putting undue pressure on him to play when he wasn't fully recovered from his surgery when joining the team in 2007.

Really? I understand they may have put pressure on you, but no one one forced you, and you know your body better than anyone. Stand up for yourself, the long term benefit of your new team and tell them you aren't ready. Simple as that. Will they be dissappointed? Probably. Even a tad upset? Perhaps. So what.

And why, of all people is the first ears you let listen to your comments be the media? Did it not occur to you to give management a call when they wouldn't call you and give them a piece of your mind? The end result would still be the mutual distaste that now likely exists, but 29 other GM's wouldn't know they can take the Oilers to school on a trade.

My thoughts to management are this...

What the heck are they thinking? How many times does this have to happen before you do what needs to be done to keep players happy?

How hard is a phone call? It's likely a bit tougher now that every dialed number requiers you enter an area code, but c'mon. How many times did we hear Tambellini say there wasn't much action during certain points of the season? Maybe, Steve and Kevin, while your playing with your thumb up your @$$, you can take 5 minutes to make a phone call.

This sounds almost like a case of teenage jealousy. That this is as simple as Souray is unloved. Call it being a baby, call it feeling left-out, but if a simple acknowledgement that one of your top players is still important and all it will take, get off your high horse, don't leave everything to your training staff and do what is priceless in terms of team morale and phone one of your top assets.

Unless Souray is not telling the whole truth, which of course is always possible when your bent out of shape as Souray obviously is, the Oilers will now have to back pedal, do extra work and try extra hard to get fair return for a player they were hoping to unload by this years draft.

Good on ya Oilers for putting your team, your staff and your fans through all of this again. This is far too many times now, for this simply to be a coincidence.