The answer is in Oilers’ history.
Retired Edmonton Sun puck scribe Ice Chubes says general manager Ken Holland has to do what Glen Sather did in the first year the Oilers were in the NHL.
“He has to trade a Ron Chipperfield for a Ron Low.”
Dick Chubey, who relocated in retirement to record seven holes-in-one playing golf every day in the Crow’s Nest Pass and now resides with wife Gail in Lethbridge, called me to refresh my memory and point out that we’ve watched this movie before.
“Large!” said the character that gave me that nickname.
“I have something that’s been bouncing around in my melon. This isn’t the first time the Oilers got goaltending this bad night after night after night and from goalie after goalie after goalie,” he said.
“It happened in the first NHL season. If my melon isn’t letting me down, the Oilers had four straight games where they used four different goalies and none of them could stop a beach ball.
“They had Eddie Mio who came to Edmonton with Gretzky in the trade from Indianapolis and ended up as Gretzky’s best man as at his wedding. They also had Don Cutts who ended up in some sort of legal jackpot, Bob Dupuis from the Canadian Olympic team and Jim Corsi,” he said of the guy who would go on to invent the fancy stat named after him.
“For four straight games, Slats used a different one of those goalies each night and it was the same story,” Chubey remembered.
The Oilers had dropped to last place with one win in their previous 11 games when the trade deadline arrived.
“If Edmonton was going to have any hope of making the playoffs, Slats knew he was going to have to make a trade to get a goalie,” said Chubey.
It wasn’t a deal that Sather was comfortable making because of the circumstances at the time. Quebec was willing to trade Low to Edmonton but the guy they insisted the had to acquire was Chipperfield.
“Slats had to call Chipperfield at the Winnipeg hospital where he was at his mother’s death bed to tell him he’d been traded to the Nordiques.
“Meanwhile Jacques Demers called Low into his office and told Ronnie: ‘I’ve got bad news for you. You’ve been traded to Edmonton,’ he said.
“ ‘Bad news? That’s great &%#@ news!’” said Low.
“I believe Low went 8-2 and got them into the 16th and final playoff position and into a best-of-three first round playoff series with the first place overall Philadelphia Flyers.”
I looked it up. Chubes’ melon was correct as usual. Low was 8-2-1 to finish up the regular season in Edmonton.
I should have remembered it myself, Chubes pointed out.
As the Oilers were struggling going down the stretch that first NHL season after the WHA merger, I wrote the season off and unfortunately also penned a last paragraph saying that if the Oilers managed to make the playoffs I would eat my column with sauerkraut, sour cream and bitter lemon at centre ice at the Northlands Coliseum.
A Northlands’ chef shredded the column and mixed the ingredients in a bowl using way too much sauerkraut and sour cream and, surrounded by members of the Oilers Fan Club, I did indeed eat my column that day.
I then raced to the airport to catch my flight for Philadelphia and the first two games of the series. During a period of turbulence, Chubes remembers that I was battling not to use the barf bag because the combination of the sauerkraut and the sour cream wasn’t sitting well.
Anyway, Chubes is absolutely correct.
During the Oilers 2-11-2 free fall, COVID protocol sidelined Stuart Skinner (2-3) has had an .883 save percentage, repeatedly injured 39-year-old Mike Smith (0-2) is at .877 and Meltdown Mikko Koskinen (0-6) was at .855 going in to the game.
The Oilers need to make a trade for a Ron Low.
This column for reasons relating to deadline was filed prior to Saturday’s 8 p.m., game against the Calgary Flames. The Oilers headed into Saturday night’s Battle of Alberta second game with a record of 18-16-2 with four teams ahead of them in the race for the second wild card playoff position.
There’s no doubt that Holland was hoping to get to the trade deadline or free agency with Koskinen’s final $4.5-million season of salary off the books and to be in a much better position in terms of both the salary cap and availability of top goaltending talent available.
But there has to be a Ron Low out there somewhere.
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