There wasn’t a hatchet buried in Edmonton Oilers general manager Craig MacTavish or forward Ales Hemsky. The two stood side by side Wednesday morning to discuss what has been an interesting off-season for the two. Hemsky was going to be traded this summer. MacTavish made it clear that was his plan. Summer is over, the kids are back in school and Hemsky is back in Edmonton.
Call it a pre-emptive strike by the Oilers to get out in front of this issue. It would have been a hot topic at training camp but a week before that happens Edmonton has cleared the air. Ales Hemsky fell into the same category as Shawn Horcoff: long-standing veterans whose best days with Edmonton, may have passed them by; players who were tired of losing season after season and who needed a move to another team to try and jump start their careers. MacTavish made that happen for Horcoff with Dallas but couldn’t do the same with Hemsky.
After being open and honest, which is the only way MacTavish knows how to be, about dealing the two veterans the GM ran into a summer stumbling block. He couldn’t or wouldn’t ship away Ales. Did he get any offers? My guess is yes. Did he get any good offers? My guess is no. The other thing that may have happened along the way is MacTavish had a change of heart. It was with MacTavish on the Edmonton bench that the Czech winger had his best season. 19 goals-58 assists for 77 pts in 81 games. The right winger then proceeded to have 17 points in 24 playoff games. He scored the goal to get Edmonton into the playoffs in the second last game of the season. He then scored the game-winning goal in Game 6 for an opening round win against the Detroit Red Wings. Sports isn’t about being sentimental but hard not to think back to your best days on the bench and realize Hemsky was a big part of it.
At the end of the season MacTavish sat down with both Horcoff and Hemsky. They discussed that the time had come for a parting of the ways. It would work best for the team and the player. For Horcoff I think a move will work best but for Hemsky I’m not so sure that would be the case. He just turned 30, his shoulders are finally healthy and he still can do some things that only a handful of other NHL’ers can do. If the right deal came along maybe but if teams were thinking they would fleece the rookie GM for a high-end talent, it wasn’t going to happen.
Instead it’s onward and forward. It was a little awkward for the two to stand side by side knowing one wanted out and the other one wanted him out. However neither wanted it to happen that badly otherwise Hemsky would have asked to be traded and he never did. Also MacTavish would have traded him and not worried about the return. Ales Hemsky is off the market and will continue to be an Oiler. He admits that he’ll need to be a better leader and there are things he needs to commit to in order to be a better Oiler. He’ll have the final year of his contract to do that. Craig MacTavish said sometimes the best deals you make are the ones you don’t make. We’ll see if that’s the case with Ales Hemsky.