Edmonton Oilers Hockey Team

The Kings unloaded another high-priced player this off-season as they dealt defenseman Lubomir Visnovsky to the Edmonton Oilers on Sunday for center Jarret Stoll and defenseman Matt Greene. Visnovsky, 31, slumped to eight goals and 33 assists last season but has been the team's highest-scoring defenseman for the last three years. He is scheduled to make $7 million this season in the first year of his five-year, $28-million extension.

The feud between Ducks General Manager Brian Burke and his Edmonton counterpart, Kevin Lowe, that has simmered for a year is at full boil again. Largely staying quiet for a year while Burke repeatedly criticized his decision to tender lucrative offer sheets, Lowe shot back, calling Burke a "moron" following comments made by the Anaheim GM to The Times earlier this week.

Ducks General Manager Brian Burke on Friday reacted sharply to the five-year, $21.25-million offer sheet tendered to restricted free-agent forward Dustin Penner by the Edmonton Oilers, calling it a "gutless" move by Oilers executive Kevin Lowe. In his first comments since the offer was made on Thursday, an outraged Burke characterized Lowe's move as "an act of desperation by a GM fighting to keep his job" and didn't hide his disdain.

CALGARY, Canada -- The topic, or at least one of them, was the Wizard of Oz on a brisk morning recently here at the Saddledome, and the Edmonton Oilers' Dustin Penner reached back into his childhood and pondered the size of the man. "Was the Wizard of Oz short? I'll have to Google it," he said, sounding amused. This wizardry had nothing to do with slick stick handling in the slot.

The emergence of a strong scoring line featuring rookie wing Dustin Penner, second-year wing Joffrey Lupul and veteran center Todd Marchant has eased some of the offensive burden on the Ducks' top line of Teemu Selanne, Andy McDonald and Chris Kunitz. Edmonton has a deep collection of speedy, aggressive forwards that will test the Ducks' defense. Left wing Ryan Smyth is tough to handle in the slot area, and center Shawn Horcoff has been strong in the regular season and the playoffs.

After an agonizing six-day wait, the Mighty Ducks have an opponent for the Western Conference finals: the Edmonton Oilers. The Oilers advanced when Dwayne Roloson made 24 saves in a 2-0 victory over the San Jose Sharks in Game 6 on Wednesday night at Edmonton, Canada. Edmonton, which overcame a 2-0 series deficit, received goals from Michael Peca and Shawn Horcoff in advancing to the conference finals for the first time since 1992.

Joffrey Lupul, who grew up near Edmonton, saw this coming and was prepared. His cellphone began ringing the moment the Edmonton Oilers eliminated the San Jose Sharks on Wednesday. "I had about 30 calls and text messages from friends, all about how we are going down against the Oilers," said Lupul, who is from nearby Fort Saskatchewan. His solution was to turn off the phone. Lupul's family had season tickets to Oilers games when he was a kid and attended "about 25 games each season.

Captain Scott Niedermayer's house had become the gathering place for a number of Mighty Ducks players Wednesday night. They had come to watch Game 6 of the Western Conference semifinal series between the Edmonton Oilers and San Jose Sharks. For 2 1/2 hours, it was fun. At 7:43 p.m., the mood changed. "As soon as the game was over, the nervousness set in," said Todd Fedoruk, the Ducks' enforcer. "It got real quiet. It was like, 'OK, boys, it's time to go.' It was nice to be out of limbo."

For nearly a decade, the door to the Edmonton Oilers' locker room was marked Exit Only. They'd find and develop talented players, but the economics of life in a small Canadian market doomed them to run in place.