Oilers Trade Penner for ... what?

[Thorin]

He's not our primary goalie because

1. Khabibulin is our highest-paid goalie and it'd probably be considered an insult to him and the one who recruited him to be replaced by the lowest-paid goalie
2. He played in a different league on a different continent last year where it was originally reported that he broke his neck (turns out it was just contusions on some neck vertebrae)
3. Dubnyk is supposed to be getting groomed as the next big goaltender
4. Khabibulin needed to play lots to increase his value for possible trades
5. The Oilers brass might secretly be hoping to be in 30th again this year so they get another great first-round pick (Couturier, Nugent-Hopkins, Larsson, Landeskog?)

Notice none of those reasons have anything to do with whether he's the best goalie or not - well, maybe the one about him playing in a different league, thus being kind of unknown.

Gerber's got great positional awareness and generally doesn't panic.  He's excited to play and it shows in his body language on the ice.  I'll bet he's good to have in the dressing room as an older guy with lots of experience who clearly wants to break back into the NHL.

[Mr. Analog]

One thing that kind of sucks about the NHL is exactly this, the least important part of the club seems to be whether or not they're putting guys with talent and drive on the ice, wheeling/dealing is certainly a prominent factor in this.

Puttin' on the foil coach! (Tinfoil Hat Time)

I do get the sense that Edmonton is racing the bottom to get into one of the coveted bottom three spots for a better chance at getting their hands on top picks, but really if it didn't help last year is it going to help this year?

Like is there some threshold they have to hit during the mid-season where they decide to scale back the effort in hopes of making a strategic gain on the team-building front? There's another thing, from a morale perspective if the plan really is to just rebuild from the top down over a period of 2 to 3 years the message is that the problems inherent in the club are so un-fixable that it will take all-new people to get the team out of the dregs.

I'm REALLY hoping we're at the bottom again because we actually suck and not for the tinfoil hat wearing reasons above...

[Thorin]

Wow, I got a few of those predictions wrong:

1. Penner doing well with the Kings (no, not at all - 42 games, 74 shots, 13 points, does not a great winger make; that's comparable to Belanger, who is clearly our third or fourth line center, not a high-end guy)
2. Teubert not playing in the NHL this year (turns out the Oilers still believe in trial by fire, even though it's never worked for them)
3. Gerber playing in the NHL this year (he's in Sweden playing for a team he played for when he was young)