In the second trade in NHL history between the Calgary Flames and Edmonton Oilers, the Flames acquired Ladislav Smid and Marc-Olivier Roy from their provincial rivals sending Roman Horak and Laurent Brossoit to Edmonton on this day in 2013.
Like any traditional rivalry it wasn’t easy for the Oilers and the Flames to generate a deal, in fact it took over two weeks for Flames general manager Jay Feaster and Oilers general manager Craig MacTavish to strike a deal.
When Smid, the 27-year-old from Czechoslovakia, found out he’d be part he was blindly surprised by the Oilers decision to send him off to their arch rivals.
“I did see my minutes dropping, but when they told me I was still kind of shocked,” Smid told the Edmonton Journal‘s Jim Matheson after hearing the news while out for dinner with some friends from around the league.
Smid hung around Calgary for a few more years following the trade, but didn’t quite produce the way he once did back in Edmonton. In 109 games he collected a single goal and seven points. He ended up landing himself in the bottom pairing alongside Deryk Engelland in what was rumoured to be a terrible pairing.
His cap hit was the least of the Flames issues. His $3.5 million AAV didn’t carry a exhaustive weight due to their wealth of cap space, but still hand the market scratching their heads on why he was still being kept around.
As injuries began to creep into the picture people started question what to do with the then 29-year-old blueliner. Eventually he found his own way out in 2017 signing with the Bili Tygri Liberec in the Czechia league.
Roy didn’t end up becoming the hopeful goaltending prospect that the Flames were hoping for. He never started an NHL game with the Flames and spent the majority of his time split with the clubs AHL affiliate the Abbotsford Heat and the ECHL’s Alaska Aces. In 2016 he moved on from the National League and signed with the Olimpija Ljubljana of the International Central European Hockey League.
If you didn’t already know how the trade turned out for the Oilers you might be asking, well what about Horak and Brossoit?
Horak like Smid didn’t exactly turn things around when he touched down in the once City of Champions, in fact, he lasted not even a full season and only played two games before catching a flight to play in the KHL with the Vityaz Podolsk for the 2014-15 season.
Brossoit, on the other hand stuck around a tad bit longer, but got caught up in the goalie scramble as the Oilers desperately searched for their light at the end of the decade of darkness.
The netminder made 28 appearances in orange and blue including his NHL debut in 2014-15. Across four years he posted a record of 7-13-2 with a .897 save percentage and 2.98 goals against average. He too moved on from the Oilers in 2018 signing as a free agent with the Winnipeg Jets.
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