Mark Spector

Mark Spector is a columnist for sportsnet.ca

Sheldon Souray has likely stepped onto the ice in an Oilers uniform for the last time.

"Get the hell out."

Leave it to Pat Quinn to boil the Sheldon Souray situation down to four salient words, as he did on Tuesday when asked about Souray's Sunday sermon on Sportsnet.ca.

"I'm one of those guys that (believes)," Quinn began, "if you don't want to play here, don't screw around. Get the hell out."

Ah, the ambiguous Irishman.

"I've always believed you should be able to look in your teammates' eyes and … build trust," he said. "But if you've got one guy sitting over there who doesn't want to bloody well play here, how do you build trust? How do you have a team?"

Souray faced the media at some length on Tuesday, reiterating his trade request. You can blame whomever you want for this relationship gone sour, but in the end, Souray is just another long-term signing that didn't work out in Edmonton. Another big contract the Oilers signed, and now would love to rid themselves of.

It's becoming a trend here, and it can't always be the players' fault.

Meanwhile, when nearly every other pertinent Oiler took a turn in front of the microphones on locker clean-out day, Dustin Penner skipped out the back door.

Putting some finality on a 30th-place finish, the worst in franchise history, is not the easiest day of the year. In Edmonton Tuesday, the Oilers' leading scorer left his share of the responsibility to his teammates.

This, the day after an assistant captain carves up management.

Meanwhile II: Oilers GM Steve Tambellini chose not to address the Souray quotes on Sunday, refused when requested Monday, and did not address the issue Tuesday until issuing an afterthought statement at 4 p.m. local time.

He has an Edmonton press conference scheduled for 1 p.m. on Wednesday that could have been dominated by the positive story of having the No. 1 pick overall. But because the club avoided the Souray story, a three-day-old story will have its say again today.

Of all the NHL organizations we can think of that might have wanted to get out in front of another negative story, the Oilers are likely it.

Do you think there's work to do in Edmonton? Yikes.

With four defencemen coming off of recent injuries or still injured, and a goalie still in search of his mojo, if you hadn't watched the Vancouver Canucks all season long you would say they are a Round 1 upset waiting to happen.

Sami Salo, who by one website's unofficial count has been injured 28 times in his 11-year career, couldn't even wait for a game to get hurt, falling in practice Friday. Now, he says it was only the 'flu'. History tells us that's a fib.

Christian Ehrhoff twanged a knee last week. Shane O'Brien and Aaron Rome were dinged up in the second-to-last regular-season game.

The good news is, the strength of this club is its incredible depth at forward. So here's a positive spin on Round 1 for Vancouver:

If the forwards play the way they can, and Luongo slowly puts his game back together, they'll get past the Kings in six or seven games. Sweeping St. Louis last season made for false confidence. Perhaps the gritty road will be a better path for Vancouver.

We're sticking with the Canucks in seven.

Down in Calgary, it seems the Flames aren't in such a bad spot after all, even with those lousy contracts and that 10th-place finish. Everything is fine - just ask the president and the general manager. They'll tell ya.

"We're a really good hockey club, first off," GM Darryl Sutter said. "On paper, we're a really good hockey team. We get three or four guys back to numbers they have to hit, you're right back to where you were."

This team had very few injuries, and Miikka Kiprusoff gave them better goaltending than likely 26 other teams. A lot went right in Calgary this past season, and it still finished 10th.

In a province where the other NHL team as always been accused of living in the past, it seems the Flames may be catching up on that account.

"We have what we think of as emotional equity," Flames president Ken King said of the relationship between the team and its fans. "We put a lot of emotional equity in that bank account when Darryl came in in 2004 with great promise of seasons thereafter. We know we spent some of that equity. We understand that. You never really know if you're in overdraft position."

Not sure what that means. But it sounds smart.