"If you're waiting for Steve Tambellini to be served up as some sort of sacrifice for the way the Edmonton Oilers season has toileted for the third year in a row, forget about it.

While he's in the final year of his current contract, your correspondent has learned that Tambellini will not be a lame-duck general manager going forward to the trade deadline or the draft.

Tambellini will be given the opportunity with a contract extension to carry on through additional years of the massive rebuild.

Indeed, sometime between the all-star break and the trade deadline, it is expected Oilers' owner Daryl Katz and president of hockey operations Kevin Lowe will sit down and work out the arrangements of a new deal going forward.

The only real hang-up might be the term."