Don Cherry was offered a scouting job with the Edmonton Oilers; Mark Messier requested a trade in 1992

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Here’s a couple of pieces of Edmonton Oilers history for your summer hockey fix: First, former Boston Bruins coach Don Cherry was promised a scouting job with the Edmonton Oilers, and second, Oilers great Mark Messier asked to be traded away from Edmonton.

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Cherry once recalled getting into trouble on Hockey Night in Canada for something he said — a common occurrence even in the cruder, more brash, more freewheeling 20th century — when Oilers hockey team boss Glen Sather came up to him and said, “I hear you’re getting fired?”

Cherry said that might well be the case.

“Well,” Sather said, “you still got a job with us as a scout if you ever get fired.”

Cherry recounted the story on his latest Grapevine podcast, adding of the offer: “It made me feel pretty good. I would have taken a pretty significant pay cut.”

As for Messier’s story, the former Oilers star was on the Spittin’ Chiclets podcast, where he said in 1991 that he knew it was time for a change after winning five Stanley Cups in Edmonton. His Oilers reached the Final Four in 1991 but were eliminated.

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“At the end of it all, I thought I needed a change. The team needed to restructure. Wayne was gone. Paul was gone. Grant was gone. Personally, I needed a different challenge, professionally, and I told Glen that when the buzzer rang, I thought, ‘Wow, this is the last game I’m going to play for the Edmonton Oilers.’ I called Glen and said, ‘Glen, you need to restructure the team. It’s been 12 years. That’s more than we ever expected, I’m sure.’ We knew Wayne was going to win, but did we ever think we were going to win five Stanley Cups? Probably not. He was like, ‘Where would you like to go?’ And I was like, ‘If you get the chance, I’m 31, I wouldn’t mind going to New York.’” “So he was able to make an exchange with New York.”

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It’s a happy ending to the Messier trade story, because it was never known at the time that Messier had asked to leave. It was reported at the time that Messier and the Oilers were in a contract dispute, and there was bitterness in Edmonton because Edmonton didn’t get much value in return for Messier. There were also angry rumors that had been brewing for years that Edmonton had been shortchanged in terms of play in return for Messier because Oilers owner Peter Pocklington was demanding millions in cash as part of the return. I finally confirmed this fact, once and for all, in a 2010 interview with Pocklington, that he got $2 million in the deal.

Of course, in 1991, many Edmonton fans would have been upset, if not outraged, by Messier’s departure. I probably would have been outraged. But that was 34 years ago. The world was different then, and the NHL was certainly different.

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We’ve all become much more accustomed to the idea that NHL players have a say in where they play. I’m happy for Messier that he got to live out his dream in New York.

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