Editor's Note: Sorry I missed this last night. Front-paging Chickendirt's FanPost on the need to heal an old wound...

Chris Botta's latest piece (See he's much more than just blogger. Usually that word is reserved for journalists) poses an interesting question regarding honoring Pierre Turgeon. I agree with him that there is a very large section of the fan base that his clamoring for him to have his night and a generation of newer Islanders fans that have no idea who he is much less ever seen him lace 'em up.

But there is a much larger context that is missing and unexplained. Something that has not been expressed is what Turgeon represents to us besides just a '93 Islanders team that pulled off one of the greatest upsets of the last 20 years. And it doesn't go back to a playoff series win and a conference finals appearance.

It goes back to the day Turgeon was traded.

You ask anyone where they were when they heard the news of that trade they will be able to tell you exactly where they were and who and what delivered the news to them. Me, I was in my first year of college, coming home from class on my way up the stairs to my dorm room. It was my first year living in Boston and my dorm was mobbed with nothing but Bruins fans. I was between the second and third floor when one of em came up to me laughing at how stupid Don Maloney was as he had just traded Turgeon to Montreal for Kirk Muller. This was the beginning of a fiasco that would live in infamy in Islanders lore. Without rehashing all of it lets just say even the folks in Boston who rarely followed this team knew that Muller was going to hold out and refuse to play for them.

Upon hearing the news I felt my guts just sink to the floor and I swear my heart stopped beating. Don Maloney, ever the teflon GM, had dashed the last and perhaps only glimmering hope we had. Turgeon was the Islanders.

Before that Maloney made a boneheaded move exposing Healy to the expansion draft. This was probably the beginning of a long list of foibles with this team but the Turgeon trade just confirmed it.

Anyways. Should the Islanders have a night to honor Turgeon? Nope. Not just Turgeon but that entire '93 team that was inexplicably ripped apart and torn asunder by a GM that didn't know what he was doing and an owner that just didn't give a hoot. That 92/93 team was not a world-beater by any stretch of the imagination, but in mind, for what they represent to the fans, they are just as important as the Cup teams and honoring them is the right gesture to the fans.

What it means?

I'M SORRY!!!!

WE GET IT!!!!

NEVER AGAIN!!!

That's exactly what it means. And it would go a long way to healing a wound that has never healed with the fans. We can go back and rehash the foolish trades of Bertuzzi, McCabe, Chara, Luongo etc. The circus didn't begin there. It began with the Turgeon trade.