Mulletgate, Day 11

The never-ending Mulletgate story took another turn this morning when it was revealed — first by TSN — that forward Colin Fraser, acquired by the Kings in the trade that sent Ryan Smyth to Edmonton, apparently has an injury that might cause him to miss the first two months of the season. The trade can’t/won’t be voided, and while Kings did not intend to buy out Fraser’s contract — which they would now be prohibited from doing anyway, if he’s not healthy — and the Kings certainly don’t lack for fourth-line forwards, today’s news just speaks to how ridiculous this whole situation is/was. The Oilers said Gilbert Brule was healthy. The Kings (and, apparently, the NHL) said he wasn’t. The Oilers traded a different player to the Kings, and now he turns up with an injury. There was already some bad blood between the Kings and Oilers, based on the way the Smyth/Brule situation dragged out, and now there’s this.

The most likely scenario here is that Fraser will start the season on injured reserve — if he’s hurt, he can’t be assigned to the AHL — and then either go to Manchester (and be exposed to the waiver process) or compete for a spot on the roster when he’s healthy.

Rules for Blog Commenting

  • No profanity, slurs or other offensive language. Replacing letters with symbols does not turn expletives into non-expletives.
  • Personal attacks against other blog commenters, and/or blatant attempts to antagonize other comments, are not tolerated. Respectful disagreement is encouraged. Posts that continually express the same singular opinion will be deleted.
  • Comments that incite political, religious or similar debates will be deleted.
  • Please do not discuss, or post links to websites that illegally stream NHL games.
  • Posting under multiple user names is not allowed. Do not type in all caps. All violations are subject to comment deletion and/or banning of commenters, per the discretion of the blog administrator.

Repeated violations of the blog rules will result in site bans, commensurate with the nature and number of offenses.

Please flag any comments that violate the site rules for moderation. For immediate problems regarding problematic posts, please email zdooley@lakings.com.