Tuesday is a big day in franchise history for the Edmonton Oilers. The NHL Lottery draft could solidify Edmonton's spot at the podium first come the June 25th NHL entry draft.

Tuesday is also a day that Sheldon Souray is expected to talk and the Oilers management will spend some time answering the question of how it feels to draft one or two (whichever spot they end up drafting in), but more time answering questions about Souray's sudden distaste for Oilers management.

As I said, it's a big day for the Edmonton Oilers. But don't think for a second, it's as big as some are making it out to be.

In terms of Sheldon Souray, he may repeat what was already said if he's still pissy and feeling mistreated. He may also politely back pedal just a touch knowing his comments are doing more than hurting Oilers management for which they were intended.

Many won't care because for those that find this a real issue, the damage has already been done. Nothing new said will change it. For those that didn't find this an issue, they site Souray's comments as comparable to a guy who quits after getting fired.

The only real interesting issue that might come up is how Souray elaborates on his accusation he was possibly forced to play injured. If he goes that far, it has serious possible reprocussions.

When Oilers management is asked to respond, they'll likely want to say all the things that are on their mind and take the chance to defend their position, but they probably won't. Doing so, would devalue the "asset" in Sheldon Souray more than his coming out and attempting to hurt the Oilers organization more than he already has.

The Oilers will likely express their disappointment in his comments, explain they don't understand the timing, but in turn say very little. Fans will still be forced to wonder if Souray is just venting and not telling the whole truth.

In the draft, we'd all like to see the Oilers draft #1. Their luck suggests someone else winning the lottery, but really, would it make that big a difference if we drafted #2?

No one seems to be able to decide who should go one and who should go two. TSN's ranking has Taylor Hall back on top when just last week Seguin was the favorite by central scouting. The Oilers likely aren't sure, knowing they need both type of players, so having a decision already made isn't the worst problem to have.

The Oilers aren't going to be phased. Both players will be superstars in this league and drafting in the top two, when there are only two real keepers in the draft means for once, the Oilers can't really lose despite what happens.

It's actually kind of nice feeling. One I haven't felt in a while.

The upside? Drafting someone like Taylor Hall who could come in and score 25-30 goals essentially erasing the stench Souray seems to now be leaving in his wake.

I'll be watching tomorrow. But as often happens, I'll be expecting a less dramatic day than it would seem might appear on paper.

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.

With the end of the season one game away, the Edmonton Oilers will have a busier off-season than most.

Starting on Tuesday when the Draft Lottery takes place and the Oilers either retain their number one pick or move down to drafting second; the lottery is just one of many big days ahead for the Oil in the next four months.

Even a handful of players who might normally wonder which golf course they'll play first over which team in the playoffs after finishing dead last, have a lot of options to weigh and likely some sleepless nights.

For players like Sam Gagner, Gilbert Brule, Andrew Cogliano, Devan Dubnyk, Jeff Deslauries, Mike Comrie, Fernando Pisani, Marc Pouliot, JF Jacques, and Aaron Johnson, wondering where they fit into a still smaller cap space situation will linger on their minds.

With the likes of Taylor Hall or Tyler Seguin, Jordan Eberle, Pajarrvi-Svensson, Linus Omark and other prospects getting a fair look at this years camp, there simply aren't enough spots and some changes are guaranteed to be made.

For players like Sheldon Souray, Ethan Moreau, Robert Nilsson, Patrick O'Sullivan and possibly, but not probably Dustin Penner, Ales Hemsky and Tom Gilbert; their positions on a clearly rebuilding team are in question.

The problem now becomes, who goes, who doesn't and who deserves a chance this coming year or the year after, depending on which year management feels is the year to ice the team of the future?

The play of late from some of the roster on this 30th place team isn't helping management make those decisions.

Players like Mike Comrie, who might have been an easy one to let slip through the cracks will have to be given serious consideration thanks to his play of late, including Saturdays two goal performance. He's been steady when in the line-up, can quarterback a powerplay in the abscence of some of the injured stars, (which the Oilers never seem shy of) and he's a proven veteran on what will be a very young team.

Tom Gilbert, who was rumoured as trade bait to a number of teams including recently Boston alongside Dustin Penner for their top first round draft pick, now has 9 points in the last four games and is no longer an after-thought when making more cap room becomes an option. Gilbert is showing signs of why he was given a larger contract to begin with and paired with Ryan Whitney could be one half of the Oilers top defence pair going forward.

Marc Pouliot has showed signs, Andrew Cogliano has been rejuvinated in a top six forward role along side Penner, and Shawn Horcoff, who we all know is likely untradeable, is doing much more now to try and earn some of that money, than he did the first 60 games of the season. Even Ethan Moreau, who was offered to almost everyone at the trade deadline, hasn't been half bad since he realized nobody wanted him.

So who goes to make room? The Oilers have some tough choices ahead of them.

All I can say is, thank goodness this year, a year in which the Oilers finally have a top tier draft pick, that both Tyler Seguin and Taylor Hall are in the same draft at spots number one and two.

All over the net today, I've found items like this Oilers draft lottery simulator. While the Oilers stand a 48.2% chance of maintaining the first overall pick in this years draft, they stand a 51.8% chance that someone else moves up, thus moving the Oilers down to number two.

The Oilers as well as all of their fans who eagerly await the arrival of either Seguin or Hall will find out on Tuesday where exactly the Oilers will draft.

The good news? The Oilers can't draft worse than 2nd. That guarantees either Taylor Hall or Tyler Seguin, who continue to go back and forth in NHL scouting as to who should be the clear cut number one.

The bad news? I refreshed that simulator over 9 times before the Oilers finally retained the pick.

Give it a shot. See how many times it takes you before your Edmonton Oilers are drafting first overall?

The 30th place Oilers take on the 29th place Maple Leafs in a "Battle of the Basement" on Hockey Night in Canada's opening game.

In any other circumstance, Oilers fans would want this game more than most in the win column, as the hate on for Toronto, the direct magnitude of an opening game on CBC, and the Oilers wanting to stick it a bit more to Brian Burke, just has a nice to ring to it.

Except of course, if you consider that a win against the Maple Leafs would put the Oilers a tiny five points behind Toronto in the standings and on the line is the first overall, in some cases even 2nd overall pick if the Oilers let the Leafs finish last by seasons end.

So, who will you be cheering for?

The Oiler players don't want to lose. They've said as much realizing exactly what's at stake. The coaching staff doesn't want the team to lose... they never should.

The fans may be another story.

I'm not one of those fans as my least favorite team in the NHL is the Maple Leafs. My least favorite GM, Brian Burke and I think, they'll be plenty of opportunity for the Oilers to lose the correct amount of games to keep that number one pick.

Go Oilers!.

With all due respect to Steve Staios, who bled Oiler colors for years, was a great player, team leader and heart on his sleeve type assitant captain; the trade that sent Staios to the Flames "could" turn out to be something extraordinary. I put could in quotes because this analysis is based on three games and Tambellini could still screw it all up.

I'll be the first to admit, I knew little about Aaron Johnson when his name was mentioned as included in the Steve Staios trade. I thought Johnson was the throw in and the 3rd round pick the pivot point of the deal. Boy was I wrong.

Granted, Johnson has played only three games with the Oilers. But something about this kid (and he is still a kid at 26 years old compared to Staios who is 37) tells me Johnson was waiting for a situation in which he could shine.

In a +/- +3 in three total games with the Oilers since the trade, Johnson has seen more ice time now than he ever has in the NHL. Case in point on Thursday, Johnson played over 26 minutes against the Canadiens when Whitney went down after a blocked shot.

Instead of gassing under the extra time, he's flourishing, playing tough minutes in tough situations. He's basically Edmonton's number two defenceman in the abscence of Whitney and at times he almost looks like he belongs there.

Coming into the Oilers room, Johnson had to show the coaching staff and management that he deserves to be looked at as more than just that extra throw in during a trade that primarily was meant to move salary and obtain picks. No one figured he'd be a name the Oilers dressed after this season.

Unless management knew something about four other teams who've had Johnson before didn't, he's making it hard not to put him on your roster come 2010/2011.

I don't suggest Johnson is a guy you look to as your number two d-man going forward. In fact, three and four might be a stretch. But at 6'1" and 208lbs, he's big. At 26, he's young. And for 26 minutes, where players like Pronger and Bouwmeester spend much of it floating, but smartly relaxing to pace themselves, Johnson is full throttle from the minute he steps on the ice, which can only mean he's also in tremendous shape.

When the Oilers moved Staios and his $2.7 million salary, I thought they had done well getting a draft pick in return because they cleared space to make decisions for next season. I knew Staios had a quality about him that a few teams might take interest in. I was even more impressed that they picked up a player too.

What I didn't see coming, was that the decision the Oilers might have to make would be sitting right in front of them in Aaron Johnson.

Having watched Johnson over the last three games, I'm almost willing to let slide a good chunk of Tambellini's mistakes during his short stint as Oilers GM. Big Steve still has a lot to do to improve this team in all areas, but this is a good start in an area that was sorely lacking for the Oilers.

Whether they keep him and at a good price should he continue to play well is another story. But when I posted earlier that the Oilers were still doing alright with Smid, Souray, Gilbert, Chorney, and Whitney as their starting point from the blueline this summer, perhaps I should have included Johnson's name.

The math is pretty simple if you understand how the draft lottery works.

No team can win and move up more than a certain amount. No team can also drop more than one spot. That means, if the Oilers were to finish 30th in the NHL standings at the end of the season, they have a 48% chance of staying put or worst case scenario, if another team wins the lottery and moves to draft number one, the Oilers are guaranteed draft spot number 2.

The Oilers would be fine if they drafted 30th or 29th. Taylor Hall and Tyler Seguin are the consensus number one and two picks in the this years draft and the Oilers along with a number of other experts are having trouble determining who should be the clear cut number one.

If the Oilers were to somehow string a run of final wins together, as it looked like they might do for a second when they beat both New Jersey and Minnesota, they would stand the chance that Toronto could swoop in and place 30th, thus giving the first pick to the Boston Bruins.

This could, if the Oilers lose the draft, mean they draft third where a respectable defenceman Cam Fowler sits. Most would agree though, Fowler while good, isn't Hall or Seguin.

In the two wins, the Oilers actually looked a better team than their record suggested. That is, until they completely fell apart against the Senators and showed everyone why they sit in last place in the NHL.

The buzz among fans regarding the draft in Edmonton isn't a quiet one. It's hard, when the team is so unsuccessful, to draw anything but a silver lining knowing as a team in rebuild mode, you'll get to draft the number one overall pick simply by losing a few more games. It's no surprise, fans who went to see the Senators trounce Edmonton 4-1 weren't upset. A coveted spot like the first pick in the draft has produced players like Sidney Crosby, Patrick Kane and Steven Stamkos; who will no doubt be superstars if they aren't already.

The noise however isn't sitting well with the Oilers. "You can't just pack it in. We all do this because we love it. You don't just stop trying. The last thing on your mind is how you're going to do in a lottery pick." said Mike Comrie. When he said as much, he understood the talk, but was not pleased that he had to address it. Not coincidentally, Comrie is fighting for a job next season.

Sam Gagner reitterated the sentiment. "You play to win games," Gagner said. "There's pride in that. You want to feel good about yourself. Funny, Gagner is set to earn good money with a productive season.

Or, Tom Gilbert may have said it best. "If you go out there and you want to get that first or second pick and you want to lose, that's a loser mentality. As a player, you don't want that to sink into you. You play to win regardless of what place you're in. Anything else is a loser mentality." Odd, that Gilbert, who has had an extremely poor season and taking up a large portion of the Oilers cap space discusses the loser mentality. It wasn't a few days ago that Gilbert was nearly traded to the New York Rangers.

While we as fans see the bonus in finishing last, there are a number of players on this current Oilers roster playing for more than wins and losses. Fernando Pisani, Mike Comrie, Andrew Cogliano, Sam Gagner, Gilbert Brule, Marc Pouliot, Ryan Potulny and JF Jacques along with defencemen Jason Strudwick, Theo Peckham and newcomer Aaron Johnson need to show there's a place for them on this team going forward. Furthermore, both goalies Deslauriers and Dubnyk are trying to earn a spot in the NHL on a consistent basis.

Whether they see it as a better pay day, a continued stance of employment in the NHL or simply pride as a professional, you can bet these guys aren't just calling it quits with the hope someone will be here to save the team.

In fact, with word that the Oilers will consider but be careful with Jordan Eberle's introduction to the NHL, along side managements plan to bring Magnus Svennson from Sweden; the players on this current Oilers roster already know they'll be competing for jobs. They'll be no time to rest for guys that have had anything but a stellar season.

My guess, is that this team is much more frustrated than the simple fact they are in last place. Many will be unemployed or no longer in the NHL when all is said and done. That's enough to put anyone on edge.

The Oilers lost a stinker on Tuesday night. And despite Jeff Deslauriers efforts, who by the way was fantastically good for 40 minutes, as has happened so often this year, the score caught up to the many chances the Oilers gave their opponents.

Fans don't seem too bothered by another loss. In fact, as I left the building after a 4-1 routing by the Senators, many fans were kind of relieved a two game winning streak had come to an end for their Oilers, who they are now hoping obtain the #1 pick in this years NHL entry draft.

With the #30 spot, the worst the Oilers could do, even if they lost the lottery, is obtain either Tyler Seguin or Taylor Hall. Both players look to be great NHL'ers in the not so distant future.

The problem, was that the Toronto Maple Leafs were inching ever so closely to contending for the 30th spot and thus should the Oilers place 29th and lose the lottery, could obtain neither of the two previously mentioned names.

For Oiler fans looking to rebuild and putting up with a Visnovsky trade, that kind of failure is simply unacceptable.

The loss didn't stop Pat Quinn from placing all the blame squarely on the shoulders of the Oilers forwards who left the defence (and a young one at that) out to dry, by playing most of the game in the Oilers own zone.

From start to finish Edmonton was outshot, outplayed and outchanced by a wide margin. The defence had to be better than they should be, and Deslauriers had to be better than good for 40 minutes. The Oiler goalie stood no chance, and even a weak goal that opened the flood gates could hardly be blamed on Deslauriers, who must have been gassed after standing on his head.

To boot, the Oilers lost Patrick O'Sullivan 5 minutes in to a nasty slash, which immediately required a "procedure" and O'Sullivan will be out for a undetermined time.

Who gets called up will be interesting. More interesting, will be if fans and management hope it's just someone good enough to keep this team in a lock for 30th place.