Flashback Friday: Looking at the Ryan Smyth trade 19 years ago that never should’ve happened |
There have been two Edmonton Oilers to hit games played milestones this season.
For the first time in franchise history, a player played their 1,000th game with the Oilers, as Adam Henrique reached the quadruple-digit game mark on October 21st against the Ottawa Senators. On January 18th, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins became the first Oiler to play all of his 1,000 games with the Oilers.
Only one other player in franchise history, Kevin Lowe, would play 1,000 for the Oilers. Over his 19-season career, the defenceman played parts of 15 seasons with the Oilers, tallying 62 goals and 315 points in 1,037 games, reaching the 1,000 games played mark with the Oilers in the 1996-97 season, his final full season in the league. His 1,000th game was played with the New York Rangers in 1992-93.
Third on that list of most games played in the orange and blue is Ryan Smyth. Realistically, he should’ve been one of the rare players to play every single game with the same organization, but extension talks broke down after they couldn’t agree on the average annual value. The thing is, it wasn’t a huge difference either.
So on February 27th, 2007, the Oilers traded Smyth, a catalyst to the creation of Oilersnation. In this edition of Flashback Friday, we’ll look at the first big trade of the Decade of Darkness.
Trading Ryan Smyth
Let’s look at the context leading up to the trade, both in terms of Ryan Smyth’s career and the situation the Oilers were in. Drafted sixth........