No doubt in my mind.
Boston drafts this young goalie and then his rights (along with another Boston pick, Alex Campbell) are traded to Montreal by Boston for Guy Allen and Paul Reid on June 28,1964.
Guy Allen spent four years in the minors and hung 'em up.
Paul Reid never turned pro.
Alex Campbell spent one year in minor pro.
And the goalie????? Well he had an okay NHL career. You may of heard of Ken Dryden - a couple of Stanley Cups, Vezinas, etc. Hockey hall of Fame.
That was the worst I can recall and it is closley followed by the Canucks trading Alex Stojanov to the Penguins for Markus Naslund in 1996. Stojanov would "play" parts of 2 seasons (45 games total) in Pittsburgh racking up 2 goals and 4 assists and ending up playing for the New Mexico Scorpions.
Naslund has clocked 310 goals and 370 assists in a canucks' uni over 834 games.
For those who bemoan the Neely trade - you were likely not around at the time.
The Neely/Pederson trade looked pretty good for the Canucks for the first while. Although it is now viewed as a bad trade, it was quite well received at the time. Fans phoned in to sports radio talk shows saying that the Canucks gained valuable veteran goal scoring, and that the Canucks had actually won in the trade.
As a Canuck Neely in 1983-84 had scored 16 goals, 15 assists for 31 points in 56 games. In 1984-85 in 72 games, he scored 21 goals and 18 assists for 39 points and in the 1985-86 season Neely scored 14 goals and 20 assists, for 34 points. His progress appeared stalled to Canuck management.
Pederson had been a 100 point player with the Bruins in two seasons (1982-83 and 1983-84) before losing the 1984-85 season mostly to injury He had put up 76 point season in 1985-86 coming back from the injury.
With the Canucks he scored 76 points in 1986-87 and 71 points in 1987-88 before slipping to 41 points in 1988-89 before being trade to the Pens in 1989-90 Tony Tanti and Rod Buskas for Dan Quinn, Andrew McBain and Dave Capuano by Pat Quinn. He would never again score 30 points in the NHL.
Neely played well for the Bruins in his first few years. In his first year in Boston the 1986/87 season, Neely began to blossom scoring 36 goals for 72 points in 75 games but scored fewer points than Pederson's 76. However he became the proto-typical power forward scoring 50 goals in 89/90, 90/91 and 93/94 (in only 49 games). In 1989 Pederson was gone from Vancouver.
The trade was Neely and a first rounder (which became Glen Wesley who in turn became Kyle McLaren and Sergei Samsonov and McLaren became Jeff Hackett and Jeff Jillson). Some people in Vancouver have referred to this trade as the "trade that keeps on giving to the Bruins."
