By Alex Stewart,The Oil Rig

Copyright yardbarker

Among all of the What-Ifs we’ve been exploring in Edmonton Oilers history, there are likely no two with more immediate consequences than the fates of Dwayne Roloson and Chris Pronger in the 2005–06 season. Two key cogs of Edmonton’s run to that year’s Stanley Cup Final, Roloson suffered a knee injury in Game 1 of the series that ended his season. After the Oilers’ seven-game loss, Pronger requested a trade for “personal reasons” even though he had just signed a five-year contract with the team after being acquired that summer previous.

Roloson’s injury likely cost the Oilers a cup, but Pronger’s trade demand, and the subsequent deal with the Anaheim Ducks that followed cost the Oilers a Stanley Cup window. The Pronger trade knocked the Oilers into the “Decade of Darkness” and blindsided the franchise. What if neither of these events happened? How different would the late 2000s have been in Edmonton?

I’ve again been recruited as alternate Oilers GM. We know the rules, no reaching on stars in the seventh round, five years to play GM. Let’s explore a possible alternate reality for that Oilers era.

The 2005–06 season

This part is pretty simple. Roloson avoids the collison with Marc-Andre Bergeron late in the third period of Game 1.

The Oilers win the game in overtime, and backstopped by his stellar play, Edmonton defeats Carolina in six games to win the franchise’s sixth Stanley Cup. Captain Jason Smith accepts Lord Stanley’s mug from Gary Bettman as Rexall Place roars. In one of the closest Conn Smythe votes in history, Pronger just edges out Roloson for playoff MVP.

The Oilers cap off one of the greatest Cinderella runs in sports history, and Edmonton is a city of champions once again.

The 2006–07 draft and season

Rather than telling Oilers GM Kevin Lowe that Pronger wants out just three days after the Final, his agent merely tells Lowe how much the defenceman loves Edmonton. The offseason is largely a victory lap of keeping the band together.

We re-sign Roloson, Fernando Pisani, and Ales Hemsky like real life. We let rentals Sergei Samsonov and Jaroslav Spacek sign big contracts elsewhere, although we do re-sign Michael Peca for one more year (a purely selfish decision because at age four, I loved Michael Peca). We also sign Peter Sykora like real life to replace some of Samsonov’s scoring punch.

At the 2006 draft, we don’t have a first-rounder, and the only true pick of consequence will be taking Jeff Petry in Round 2, like Edmonton did in real life.

In season, the Oilers are a much stronger unit with Pronger still around, who keeps up his elite play from the previous year. The rest of the roster holds strong, and Edmonton looks just as dangerous as last year. This success enables us to right one major wrong in team history. We DO NOT trade Ryan Smyth to the New York Islanders at the deadline over a $100,000 difference in negotiations, instead signing the beloved forward to the five year deal he eventually got in Colorado. Edmonton finishes second in the West, and with much of the same roster as last season, the lines of which look like this