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To the 35 respondents who cast You Be The Boss votes in favour of letting Oilers centre Connor McDavid go, I say bravo.

OK, it’s not the first thing I would say. But it’s right up there.

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They might actually see moving McDavid as the only means of acquiring a stud defenceman. They might have been voting between hits on their bongs. They might just be contrarians, or trolls, or worse yet, Flames fans.

By suggesting the team doesn’t need the best player of his generation, just one rather impressive year into what should be a long National Hockey League career, they could also be reflecting upon the Stanley Cup-winning strategy employed by the Oilers in 1988, when then-owner Peter Pocklington sold the best hockey player of any generation, Wayne Gretzky.

Because that worked out pretty well, didn’t it? The Oilers won the Cup two years later, didn’t they? And Gretzky didn’t win another one, did he?

Sigh. No, he didn’t. And the Oilers haven’t won another since 1990. And dealing Gretzky for some odds, ends and $15 million US was the beginning of the end of this franchise’s ability to win anything but draft lotteries. It was, without doubt, the worst possible thing that could have been done to the team at that time.