The Anti-Heatley

[Ed. note: Big Shooter is lazy, and this is a shoddily put-together post. Read at your own risk. -MP]

{Big Shooter's edit: Fuck off Morty}

Bear with me for just a small moment here. As many of you know, after the Thrashers, my true love is the Edmonton Oilers. Good boys, all of them. Now, when news broke of the Heatley trade I was horrified. I'll spare you all the details as you may know them already, but to sum it up briefly, the Ghost of Billy Mays stopped the Heatley trade to Edmonton.

How then, I thought to myself, would Smid and Cogliano react to ALMOST getting traded? I didn't care so much about that Penner guy. Surely if someone can try and force his way out of town just because he played on the 2nd power play unit for a part of 30 games, then these Edomonton boys must REALLY want out of town knowing there team TRIED to move them. Let's see what they have to say:

WHY DON'T WE START WITH THIS GREAT ARTICLE FROM THE EDMONTON SUN, VIA THE FOURTH PERIOD:

Smid's glad Heatley didn't accept the move and he's ready to start the new season still a member of the Oilers.

"I'm just really happy that it worked out like that and I could stay here and play with the Oilers," he said.

"I feel good here, I bought a house a couple of years ago and it would be hard for me to move somewhere else. My life is pretty much here."

And then there is this FROM A TSN ARTICLE:

"I've had a couple of good conversations with (Oilers' GM) Steve (Tambellini) and he just said that this is how things go and this is the business side of sports," stated Cogliano. "He apologized about how it came out and how it got leaked out, I'm not holding any grudges towards anyone, that's just how it happened."

The 22-year old sees the trade talks as motivation for a big season.

"I'm a team player, I'm not going to put my ego in front of the team or in front of anyone," said Cogliano. "It could have been someone else in the trade talks, but it was me."

And that, my friends, is how you are supposed to behave when you are making millions of dollars to play a game.