taking to LinkedIn to rip into Pronger on Tuesday afternoon.<\/a><\/p>\n\u201cYou may have read Chris Pronger\u2019s recent piece in \u2018The Athletic,\u2019 and I can\u2019t overstate how disappointed I was after reading it in full,\u201d Lowe said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs general manager at the time, I handled that situation the way I always tried to: professionally, responsibly, and in good faith. Looking back, hearing how he frames it today, I find myself wishing I had handled it differently.<\/p>\n
\u201cQuite frankly, I wish I had said no and let him sit out rather than accommodate a decision he now seems so quick to diminish.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pronger signed a five-year contract worth $31.25 million with the Oilers on Aug. 3, 2005.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe day after the agreement, I received a personal note from his wife expressing how excited they both were about coming to Edmonton,\u201d Lowe wrote. \u201cThat sentiment doesn\u2019t align with the version of events being portrayed now. Perhaps at the time he was trying to reset the narrative or distance himself from circulating rumours, but it stands in stark contrast to what\u2019s being shared today.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sticking up for Edmonton, Lowe brought up that he had sat down with ex-Oilers players Doug Weight and Bill Guerin back in 2023, and they had nothing but good things to say about the Alberta capital.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere I take issue is how casually Edmonton is folded into that story as though it were merely an inconvenience tied to what he now describes as a \u2018drunken decision,’\u201d Lowe said. \u201cEdmonton is a first-class city with passionate fans and a proud hockey tradition. It is not a punchline, and it is not something to be explained away years later.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt deserves better than that, and so do the people who supported him while he was here.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Chris Pronger saga refuses to die for fans of the Edmonton Oilers. A day after the Hall…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":604915,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[49,48,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-604914","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=604914"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604914\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/604915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=604914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=604914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=604914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}