Trade Rumors and Free Agent TalkTrade rumors, transactions, and free agent talk. Rumors must contain the word RUMOR in post title. Proposals must contain the word PROPOSAL in post title.
I know Mike Keenan tends to be reviled by some of us Blues fans, but he did make one of the greatest (and most one-sided) trades in team history:
November 27, 1996
STL gets: Pavol Demitra
OTT gets: Christer Olsson
Demitra had previously played parts of three seasons with the Sens, then went to the IHL during a contract holdout at the beginning of the 96/97 season. Olsson had bounced back and forth between STL and their AHL affiliate in Worcester for the two prior seasons.
After the trade, Demitra would go on to score 493 points in 494 games (5th on the Blues all-time scoring list) and was selected to the All-Star Game three times. Olsson played TWENTY-FIVE games in Ottawa, then back to play in Sweden and never returned.
To me, what makes it so one-sided is that it was a straight up player-for-player deal with no draft picks involved and one team CLEARLY benefitted more than the other (it's easier to deem trades "one-sided" if one draft pick develops better than the other, but at the time of the trade, they're simply numbers on a draft board).
PS. From Olsson's Wikipedia page:
"...he was part of an infamous and extremely lopsided trade when he was traded by the Blues to the Ottawa Senators for Pavol Demitra. Demitra eventually became a scoring powerhouse with the Blues for a number of years while Olsson decided to go back to Sweden to play hockey after his short stint with the Senators that year."
Pit Martin is in pretty high regard in Hawks history. Obviously not as good as Phil, but I wouldn't call it enough to warrant the company of some of the trades in this thread.
Except he was dealt for a guy who would go on to win 5 Art Rosses and break the all-time NHL record for goals and points in a season.
Plus a 50 goal scorer.
Plus a 3-time 70 point scorer.
This trade absolutely belongs in the thread. Near the top, if not at it.
But that was for different reasons than just a hockey trade. That's why this thread is tough because some of the one-sided deals were because they were forced.
This is very true. Not too mention at the time of the Jagr trade very few people didn't have a high opinion on Beech, I thought that guy was going to be a monster. Really thought they got something out of a bad situation, a shame it turned out the way it did.
Can't agree with this one, Pederson was two years removed from being 6th in scoring (between Bossy and Kurri in 83-84) and was a 26 year-old centre who put up two more near PPG seasons.
It didn't work out well for Vancouver but at least they got a very good hockey player...meaning there are much worse trades out there.
The chart goes out of its way to make it seem bad though. For example from the first set of trades alone (underlined guys not mentioned in the trades):
-Thibault wasn't traded by himself for Roy and Keane, he was shipped with two young 25-30 goal scorers (Rucinsky and Kovalenko)
-Ricci was traded along with a 2nd (bust) for a 1st and Donovan
-Hextall was traded with a 1st (Todd Bertuzzi) for Fitzpatrick + 1st (Deadmarsh)
-Nolan Baumgartner was traded with Butcher + Sundin + Warriner for Clarke, Lefebvre, Wilson, and a 1st (bust)
Leaving out the fact that the Avs traded Sundin, Bertuzzi, Rucinsky, and Kovalenko sure makes things seem better for the Avs than they actually were...and that's just in the first set of trades...
The Avs dynasty was mostly built around the fact that they had drafted Sakic, Sundin, Foote, Nolan, then Lindros (and to a lesser extent Thibault) within a short time span along with getting key support players such as Kemensky and Kovalenko late in those same drafts. That's two first-ballot HHOFers (Sakic and Sundin), two potential HHOFers (Nolan and Lindros), and two all-stars (Foote and Thibault) and their GM had the balls to move key players in order to fill positions of need.
Jagr traded to the New York Rangers for Anson Carter and an agreement that Washington would pay approximately $4 million per year of Jágr's salary. Jágr also agreed to defer (with interest) $1 million per year for the remainder of his contract to allow the trade to go ahead.
The Francis deal didn't even look that lopsided originally. Cullen had been on a 100 points pace for two years running, and Zalapski was a young top 5 pick breaking out into a top offensive defenseman. But then the Pens immediately won 2 Cups while the Whalers dumped Cullen for a 2nd round pick, and Zalapski never improved his defensive game much. Later on both faded badly after serious injury/illness troubles.
Quote:
Originally Posted by JesusNPucks
This one has to be up there. I'm surprised it took 4 pages for it to come up.
I remember when the Pens got Zubov from NY, Craig Patrick said he "could score 100 points with us". But then he never fit in with the Pens. Especially on the PP which he tried to run (which was, and always had been, Mario's job) when everyone else wanted him to be the shooter. Pittsburgh wanted more size and snarl on D so they got Hatcher instead. Turned out to be the wrong brother since Kevin at this point in his career at least was more of a Ryan Whitney type.
Uhm... Wings trading Adam Oates to St-Louis for Bernie Federko and Tony McKegney was brutal.
and
Calgary trading Brett Hull to St-Louis for Rob Ramage and Rick Wamsley was pretty bad too. Those two did help the Flames win a cup but still...
also, and this is an old trade, but The Leafs giving away Frank Mahovlich Garry Unger and Peter Stemkowski to the Detroit red Wings for Norm Ulmann, and Paul Henderson Changed the leafs forever. They have never recovered from that and its now 43 years later...
The Francis deal didn't even look that lopsided originally. Cullen had been on a 100 points pace for two years running, and Zalapski was a young top 5 pick breaking out into a top offensive defenseman. But then the Pens immediately won 2 Cups while the Whalers dumped Cullen for a 2nd round pick, and Zalapski never improved his defensive game much. Later on both faded badly after serious injury/illness troubles.
Funny thing was...I just saw an article of EJ's response to that trade. He said he believed Cullen/Francis was an even trade off. Looking back, I laugh... but Cullen was a very underrated player.
In fact -
Quote:
"I've made a couple of biggies," Johnston said. "Zalapski, well, we need someone to engineer our power play from the point. We think that Cullen and Ronnie are pretty equal at center. On Parker, we got lots of information from [Springfield coach] Jimmy Roberts [who once was a Sabres assistant coach] from his days in Buffalo.
Gilmour, Dumont and a couple million dollars for Grosek
Gilmour was involved in a few trades that didn't work out for the team trading him.
St. Louis got robbed when they traded him to Calgary.
Calgary got robbed when they traded him to Toronto.
Toronto got an ok return from New Jersey for him but they blew it losing all 3 players they got for him for next to nothing.
Chicago got robbed when they traded him to Buffalo.
The only time a team could say they won is Montreal getting a 6th round pick for him when they traded him back to Toronto and he blew out his knee the first game.
This thread should be title "most one sided trade of all time? (besides Gretzky to L.A. because it's miles worse than any other deal to ever go through)"
I don't know why people always bring up the result of draft picks that were traded; then go on to make a case for how the team "lost" the trade.
You have to consider the situation at the time; none of these teams are in a position to know what those draft picks would bring; especially when they are some random late draft picks that happened to get a player no one saw as being all that noteworthy at the time.
Using hindsight doesn't justify claiming a trade was bad.
Turris is an elite shutdown forward and Runblad might never make the NHL.
Except for the fact that Maloney flipped that 2nd for Vermette who has been solid in Phoenix's system and Rundblad is in Maloney's long term interests. Lets not jump ahead of ourselves and say a 22 year old is a bust.
