Biggest "Almost" Deals Through History?

[Brodeur]

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I hadn't read this Nieuwendyk/Pronger one before:

Interesting that St. Louis was already dangling Pronger after only having him for a few months. Blues were a .500 team so maybe Mike Keenan was that impatient.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

nteresting that St. Louis was already dangling Pronger after only having him for a few months. Blues were a .500 team so maybe Mike Keenan was that impatient

there’s the perception that while keenan was a total maniac, he was also smart enough to know a cornerstone when one was on the market and be able to steal him (chelios for savard, pronger for shanahan, bertuzzi/mccabe for linden).

this maybe suggests that those huge wins were just part of the you-win-some-you-lose-some of the constant roster churn.

there’s another revelation i read this week, i can’t refind the post, but on the canucks board someone said that a book i haven’t read reports that keenan may have driven linden out of town but had nothing to do with the trade. it was brokered by head scout mike penny and AGM steve tambellini. this article i just googled corroborates.

 

[VanIslander]

Gretzky was going from Edmonton to Vancouver until the last minute.

 

[NickyFotiu]

Gretz to Rangers for like $15 mill but Gulf and Western said no.
Lindros to rangers but NHL said no.
Stamkos to NYR but Tampa's new ownership said no.

 

[Jimmy Firecracker]

During TSN's trade deadline coverage, Overdrive had Wayne Simmonds on and he said that he was almost dealt to Edmonton for Eberle.

 

[CrosbyIsKing87]

After Coffey was traded to Pittsburgh in 1987 I remember reading in the hockey news that Bobby Clarke had offered Brian Propp and Rick Tocchet for him. Or maybe it was Doug Crossman and Rick Tocchet. Two of those three.

 

[carjackmalone]

Joe Sakic and Jeremy Roenick were each offered straight up for Trevor Linden in 1990

Pat Quinn said no to both

 

[CHGoalie27]

sakic to the rangers circa 97, until colorado matched

Might I add the almost Richter for Cujo swap not long after

 

[MadLuke]

Re-reading part of the topic, I am not sure about some of the suggestion for Roy, specially if they would have been once Montreal was put in a situation that they must trade him that dropped their ability to negotiate to the ground (if it was before that, not really 100% fair to compare it to what they got).

Yzerman + pieces, and Montreal add nothing like Keane, really ? Who are telling that to journalist at the time, you do not want to tell your captain you proposed to trade him and Montreal said no, Montreal does not want to tell they did a bad choice, players agents ?

We know about the Lindros deal because they had to be specially approved by the nhl I presume, we know about the Roy for Nolan-Fiset deal because it made Savard look good versus what Montreal got and had the excuse to having been fired for not doing it... so he did tell us about it.

 

[RR44]

sakic to the rangers circa 97, until colorado matched

This might be an urban legend but didn't the Rangers fax over the Nelson Rockefeller middle finger photo after the Avs matched?

 

[RR44]

Torrey reasoning was if he was getting offered so much for Potvin by Pollock he must be pretty special.

Which shows why Torrey is one of the best GM's ever...way too smart to be fleeced by Pollock.

 

[CharlestownChiefsESC]

Gretz to Rangers for like $15 mill but Gulf and Western said no.
Lindros to rangers but NHL said no.
Stamkos to NYR but Tampa's new ownership said no.

Gretzky was true. Ownership was notoriously cheap after putting money into the team and them not winning during the Emile Francis years. They even told Espo they just want to make the playoffs and get to the finals here and there, and that risking money on a championship wasn't feasible.

Lindros was confusion on all parts happy it didn't happen. Return was too much.

I've always said Stamkos would have led to getting St.Louis earlier and 2-3 cups in that elite Hank era from 12-17.

Might I add the almost Richter for Cujo swap not long after

Wasn't true per say. After 98 the Rangers were heavily after Cujo and were considering letting Richter walk. It was so close to happening that Richter was talking to Florida about signing there. In the end Cujo chose the Leafs. The Sakic one was mentioned and ughh.

But the biggest one imo was a trade not made in the summer of 95 Kovalev and Matteau to St.Louis for Shanahan. The trade was done but just needed Garden ownership to agree. Was so close to reality that Shanahan was in New York looking at apartments. He would have been the difference post 94 and a core of him, Sakic,Cujo,Leetch and Graves would have avoided the dark ages.

 

[The Panther]

Gretzky was going from Edmonton to Vancouver until the last minute.

I don't think this is correct. Gretzky may have been dangled to the Canucks in spring 1988, but Brian Burke has detailed that he did the math and immediately concluded that there was no way the Canucks then could pay Pocklington's bill.

You may be thinking of 1996 when Gretzky indeed was all set to be a Canuck, had basically agreed to terms at a Vancouver hotel, and merely asked to sleep on it and clear it with his wife in the morning... and Canucks' management said, "No, you can't," so the deal was off.

 

[Gorskyontario]

Gretzky was going from Edmonton to Vancouver until the last minute.

This is a complete falsehood, and you have no proof of this.

 

[Michael Farkas]

This is a complete falsehood, and you have no proof of this.

This is a pretty well known thing at this point, right? Gretzky himself has talked about it several times over the last decade.

 

[MadLuke]

This is a complete falsehood, and you have no proof of this.

Gretzky himself talked about it, after the 1988 cup, he would have became an partner owner of the Canucks to make it work salary wise.

 

[Section 104]

Which shows why Torrey is one of the best GM's ever...way too smart to be fleeced by Pollock.

Besides not accepting Pollock’s trade offer, Torrey traded for Denis Potvin’s older brother Jean in March 1973. It was speculated at the time if the Islanders won the coin flip, it would give Denis an added incentive to sign with the Islanders instead of going to the WHA (in retrospect I’m not sure how many top draft picks went to the WHA which shortly began drafting younger players. But they didn’t know that…and Jean played over 400 games for the Islanders.

There was speculation a few years later the Rangers might take Potvin to eliminate the indemnity fee for allowing the Islanders to play in New York. I’m not sure if that was serious or speculation because the same people (who owned the Knicks) turned down the same owner (Boe who also owned the Nets) who offered Julius Erving in the Fall of 1976 to erase that territorial fee of $4.8 million in the merger when Erving held out claiming there was an oral agreement to renegotiate his contract if the Nets joined the NBA. Boe eventually sold Erving to Philadelphia for $3 million. So if Gulf and Western wouldn’t take Dr J, preferring money, why would they take Potvin? If they had, what would the whistle and chant at Rangers games be?

 

[Boxscore]

A few I heard straight from an ex-member of the Flyers organization while talking to them during the shooting of a documentary...

Brian Propp to Vancouver for Cam Neely. Mr. Snider balked last minute, after there was a verbal.

Ray Bourque to the Flyers for Daymond Langkow++. Bourque actually stayed in the Spectrum after his Bruins played the Flyers and told the players he'd be joining them after the game. Sinden dealt him to Colorado while Ray was still sitting in Philly.

Eric Lindros to Toronto for Mats Sundin+ (well before the Lindros for Antropov and Kaberle rumors).

The Flyers tried to get Chris Pronger out of Hartford twice before he was dealt to the Blues.

They also said the Flyers had made offers to the Stastny brothers when they were coming over. They were close to coming to Philly but Peter's concern was they wouldn't get the ice time they needed on a deep Flyers club, so they opted to play in Quebec instead.

Not a trade... but... Tony Twist had agreed to a 5-year deal with the Flyers as a free agent the day before his horrific motorcycle accident.

Joe Sakic and Jeremy Roenick were each offered straight up for Trevor Linden in 1990

Pat Quinn said no to both

Damn, could you imagine Sakic feeding Bure or young JR and Bure flying on the same line? My goodness.

 

[Stephen]

there’s the perception that while keenan was a total maniac, he was also smart enough to know a cornerstone when one was on the market and be able to steal him (chelios for savard, pronger for shanahan, bertuzzi/mccabe for linden).

this maybe suggests that those huge wins were just part of the you-win-some-you-lose-some of the constant roster churn.

there’s another revelation i read this week, i can’t refind the post, but on the canucks board someone said that a book i haven’t read reports that keenan may have driven linden out of town but had nothing to do with the trade. it was brokered by head scout mike penny and AGM steve tambellini. this article i just googled corroborates.

Linden wasn't even that old when the Canucks dealt him in 1998 at 28 but they must have had a clue in house that he was close to being cooked with all the mileage on him.

 

[Stephen]

I don't think this is correct. Gretzky may have been dangled to the Canucks in spring 1988, but Brian Burke has detailed that he did the math and immediately concluded that there was no way the Canucks then could pay Pocklington's bill.

You may be thinking of 1996 when Gretzky indeed was all set to be a Canuck, had basically agreed to terms at a Vancouver hotel, and merely asked to sleep on it and clear it with his wife in the morning... and Canucks' management said, "No, you can't," so the deal was off.

As Gretzky tells it, Nelson Skalbania was going to buy the Canucks and offer him 25% stake and a $3 million salary after the 1988 cup win. So I would guess the funds would have come from a different pot than the one Burke had.

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[Stephen]

Torrey reasoning was if he was getting offered so much for Potvin by Pollock he must be pretty special.

Bill Torrey also worked for the Oakland Seals, the team Sam Pollock fleeced for the Guy Lafleur pick. So he would have had a front row seat to how the Habs wheeling and dealing hurt these expansion rubes and better to hold onto your picks if you want to build a franchise.

 

[MS]

I don't think this is correct. Gretzky may have been dangled to the Canucks in spring 1988, but Brian Burke has detailed that he did the math and immediately concluded that there was no way the Canucks then could pay Pocklington's bill.

You may be thinking of 1996 when Gretzky indeed was all set to be a Canuck, had basically agreed to terms at a Vancouver hotel, and merely asked to sleep on it and clear it with his wife in the morning... and Canucks' management said, "No, you can't," so the deal was off.

Gretzky had no intention of signing in Vancouver except as a last resort and was just using them as leverage to get a better deal from NYR.

Every time they had a meeting with Gretzky he seemed to be dragging his feet and then they were tipped off that after the offer he 'needed to sleep on' he had a meeting arranged with NYR management for the next day. This is when Canuck management got pissed off and George McPhee called Gretzky and told him either signs or the deal was off.

Al Strachan - who was close friends with Gretzky and hated Pat Quinn - then went to bat for Gretzky to frame it like Gretzky was the wronged party.

 

[The Panther]

Gretzky had no intention of signing in Vancouver except as a last resort and was just using them as leverage to get a better deal from NYR.

Every time they had a meeting with Gretzky he seemed to be dragging his feet and then they were tipped off that after the offer he 'needed to sleep on' he had a meeting arranged with NYR management for the next day. This is when Canuck management got pissed off and George McPhee called Gretzky and told him either signs or the deal was off.

Al Strachan - who was close friends with Gretzky and hated Pat Quinn - then went to bat for Gretzky to frame it like Gretzky was the wronged party.

I wasn't there, so I don't know. According to Gretzky in that 99 Stories of the Game book, he was fully ready to sign with Vancouver the next morning, had no other competing offers, and simply got pissed off that Canucks' management insisted he sign that night.

You may be right, but it seems odd that Wayne would go out of his way to make a whole story about this in his own book if he had been secretly leveraging with NYR. As I recall from reading it, he seemed kind of pissed at the Canucks still, years later.

(I don't know what Al Strachan said, so I can't comment on that. Man, I hate Al Strachan.)

 

[MS]

I wasn't there, so I don't know. According to Gretzky in that 99 Stories of the Game book, he was fully ready to sign with Vancouver the next morning, had no other competing offers, and simply got pissed off that Canucks' management insisted he sign that night.

You may be right, but it seems odd that Wayne would go out of his way to make a whole story about this in his own book if he had been secretly leveraging with NYR. As I recall from reading it, he seemed kind of pissed at the Canucks still, years later.

(I don't know what Al Strachan said, so I can't comment on that. Man, I hate Al Strachan.)

If you go back and check the dates, you'll see that Gretzky didn't sign in NYR until July 21, three weeks into the UFA period. Which is very unusual for a top player.

Gretzky *desperately* wanted to go to NY. Bright lights of Broadway, re-unite with Mess, sign with a good team that made the Conference Finals the previous year. Low travel, lots of time with family, potential acting opportunities for his wife. It's pretty easy to see it was a much more attractive situation than a sub-500 Canadian team with terrible travel.

But NYR were in a weird flux cost-cutting period and only showed half-hearted interest (note that this was the only season of the 1990s where the high-spending Rangers signed absolutely nobody on July 1 and went into the 96-97 season with guys like Daniel Goneau and Christian Dube on their roster straight out of junior) while the Canucks went hard for him right from July 1. And the Canucks were getting very frustrated that the negotiation was dragging on for weeks when they appeared to be meeting all of his demands.

And then they got tipped off that he was taking their offers to NYR to try and get them to match, they were furious, gave an ultimatum, and gave Gretzky an opportunity to walk away and sound like the good guy when really he'd been using them.

He might have actually signed with Vancouver if NYR didn't come through ... but it wasn't what he wanted to happen and it would only have been because there weren't any other real options. The notion that he was super happy to sign in Vancouver and they ruined it by phoning him late at night is somewhere between a half-truth and an utter fabrication.

And absolutely he was still pissed years later (as was Canucks management). They basically called him dishonest in his dealings and I'm sure he didn't like that, whether it was right or wrong.

As for why he'd write it that way in his book ... I think pretty every autobiography in history provides a gilded one-sided story to make the protagonist look good. But his story doesn't make sense. If he wanted to sign in Vancouver, why did it take so long? Why would he actually have wanted to sign in Vancouver over NYR? Why would Vancouver have given him an ultimatum like that if negotiations were going well?

Vancouver had let Cliff Ronning walk on July 1 to clear money for Gretzky and then 3 weeks later they found out they were getting played and their C situation was screwed for the upcoming season. They were pissed, with good reason.

 

[The Panther]

If you go back and check the dates, you'll see that Gretzky didn't sign in NYR until July 21, three weeks into the UFA period. Which is very unusual for a top player.

Gretzky *desperately* wanted to go to NY. Bright lights of Broadway, re-unite with Mess, sign with a good team that made the Conference Finals the previous year. Low travel, lots of time with family, potential acting opportunities for his wife. It's pretty easy to see it was a much more attractive situation than a sub-500 Canadian team with terrible travel.

But NYR were in a weird flux cost-cutting period and only showed half-hearted interest (note that this was the only season of the 1990s where the high-spending Rangers signed absolutely nobody on July 1 and went into the 96-97 season with guys like Daniel Goneau and Christian Dube on their roster straight out of junior) while the Canucks went hard for him right from July 1. And the Canucks were getting very frustrated that the negotiation was dragging on for weeks when they appeared to be meeting all of his demands.

And then they got tipped off that he was taking their offers to NYR to try and get them to match, they were furious, gave an ultimatum, and gave Gretzky an opportunity to walk away and sound like the good guy when really he'd been using them.

He might have actually signed with Vancouver if NYR didn't come through ... but it wasn't what he wanted to happen and it would only have been because there weren't any other real options. The notion that he was super happy to sign in Vancouver and they ruined it by phoning him late at night is somewhere between a half-truth and an utter fabrication.

And absolutely he was still pissed years later (as was Canucks management). They basically called him dishonest in his dealings and I'm sure he didn't like that, whether it was right or wrong.

As for why he'd write it that way in his book ... I think pretty every autobiography in history provides a gilded one-sided story to make the protagonist look good. But his story doesn't make sense. If he wanted to sign in Vancouver, why did it take so long? Why would he actually have wanted to sign in Vancouver over NYR? Why would Vancouver have given him an ultimatum like that if negotiations were going well?

Vancouver had let Cliff Ronning walk on July 1 to clear money for Gretzky and then 3 weeks later they found out they were getting played and their C situation was screwed for the upcoming season. They were pissed, with good reason.

I suspect the truth lies somewhere in between. You might be viewing this in a too much of a one-sided way.

Gretzky waiting until mid-summer to sign isn't surprising after the debacle of the preceding season and his short and unhappy stint in St. Louis. He was probably determined to wait it out and get the best scenario that met his personal conditions, before retiring.

I really doubt that Gretzky "desperately" wanted to go to Manhattan. Obviously, he was open to it since he eventually signed there (Messier is his buddy and can be persuasive), but I don't think New York City is really a place that had much personal appeal to Gretzky (the idea that his wife considered acting possibilties by 1996 is silly).

What Gretzky wanted in 1996 is to go somewhere stable and 'safe', where he'd be with some friends and trusted people, and most of all he wanted to go somewhere that there was at least a chance of winning. 1996 was the sixth straight year the Canucks had made the playoffs, and even though they had had a very mediocre year, they were still competitive. We know Wayne was buddies with Pavel Bure and often expressed a desire to play with him. He also admired Trevor Linden. Russ Courtnall and Tikkanen were his chums, too. He also seemed to have a legit desire to play for a Canadian franchise again.

I suspect there had been some phone-calls and loose talk between the Rangers and Mike Barnett (Gretzky's agent) prior, but no offer was on the table, as far as we know. For his part, Gretzky says it was Bob Gainey and the Stars who made him the first contract offer that summer...