OT: Remembering January 17th, 1999: Pavel Bure is traded to the Florida Panthers

[Balls Mahoney]

Thinking about the Jovo-Ohlund pairing makes me weep both at the current state of the Canucks and how old I am.

 

[Hollywood Burrows]

Just googled it, it's even worse than we remember lol.

Why Weekes was traded: Questionable knee injury and an incredible tale of robbery led to goaltender's exit from Canucks

According to sources, Weekes told the coaching staff and team security he’d been robbed. His story went like this.
On his way to the game, he’d gone into a dry cleaner in downtown Vancouver to pick up some items he’d dropped off earlier. When he walked out of the shop, he was approached by a man.
”Are you Kevin Weekes?” the man allegedly asked.
”Yes.”
”Follow me,” he said.
At this point, Weekes told coaches and team security, the robber hopped in his car and started driving.
Weekes hopped in his and followed the guy across the Granville Street Bridge to an alley somewhere in the Granville Island area.
The guy asked for any money Weekes was carrying and the player handed over several hundred dollars in bills. There was no gun involved.
And that, said Kevin Weekes, was why he was late.

I kinda buy the story except for the part where the guy recognized him bwahaha

 

[EpochLink]

Jovanovski turned out to be a good player.
His last two years here were injury prone but from 1999-2003, he was a rock solid defensemen.

Never forget Jovanovski/Ohlund/Salo/Sopel/Baron/Malik.

This core was pretty much my high school years.

 

[Horse McHindu]

Thinking about the Jovo-Ohlund pairing makes me weep both at the current state of the Canucks and how old I am.

Quinn Hughes coming up next year sure is a depressing thought.

Depressing times indeed.

 

[Tim Calhoun]

If you think about it, our defense was ridiculous in 1999. Ohlund, Jovo, McCabe, and Aucoin - all of whom would become top pairing d-men - under the age of 25. Plus Allen and Sopel as prospects.

 

[MS]

I seriously think they should have fire the management team prior to this disaster. Same bunch bungled the Gretzky signing!!

Think about that! Gretzky wanted to center Bure and tried to come to Vancouver but Quinn screwed it up in negotiations! The best player in history wants to play with the greatest Canuck and Quinn can't climb down off his monumental ego! FFS!

It was George McPhee who phoned him and the circumstantial evidence indicates they we’re right about Gretzky using them to drive up NYR’s offer.

 

[MS]

The killer in the deal was throwing a 28 y/o Bret Hedican into it.

Hedican was quite frankly nearly as good a player as Jovanovski over the next decade and the #1 defender on a Cup winner in 2006.

If we’d got Jovanovski for Bure ... it sucks but at least you have a good asset coming back. Jovanovski for Bure and Hedican is a big loss.

 

[EpochLink]

If you think about it, our defense was ridiculous in 1999. Ohlund, Jovo, McCabe, and Aucoin - all of whom would become top pairing d-men - under the age of 25. Plus Allen and Sopel as prospects.

That sucked Aucoin was traded for Cloutier, he did get paid big by the Islanders though.
McCabe when he was here was pretty good, although he would be much maligned in Toronto.

 

[Hit the post]

That sucked Aucoin was traded for Cloutier, he did get paid big by the Islanders though.
McCabe when he was here was pretty good, although he would be much maligned in Toronto.

Was he though? I thought Kaberle covered up alot of his weaknesses (much like Campbell made Guds look like a #4 D in Florida).

 

[EpochLink]

Was he though? I thought Kaberle covered up alot of his weaknesses (much like Campbell made Guds look like a #4 D in Florida).

Yeah, Kaberle did alot of the defense work on that pairing.

 

[lawrence]

I had no clue we had to give up Hedican of all people. I really thought it was Bure for Player(s). I was chocked when we gave up Hedican, and was shocked we got Gagner instead of Nediermayer.

Hedican and Bure for the 2000 season lead the Panthers to a strong season, meanwhile Jovo wasn't doing much for us also.

would have been a nasty trade for us, if Jovo didn't turn into a solid offensive dman for us.

Mike Brown turned into nothing
Gagner turned into nothing
Weekes was turned into Potvin which then turned into nothing
Nathan Smith well he really turned into nothing.

not one other component turned into anything.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

Thinking about the Jovo-Ohlund pairing makes me weep both at the current state of the Canucks and how old I am.

granted i didn’t pay so much attention during the last messier year but i don’t remember there ever being an ohlund-jovo pair. i remember jovo with lachance and malik, ohlund with baron and sopel.

The killer in the deal was throwing a 28 y/o Bret Hedican into it.

Hedican was quite frankly nearly as good a player as Jovanovski over the next decade and the #1 defender on a Cup winner in 2006.

If we’d got Jovanovski for Bure ... it sucks but at least you have a good asset coming back. Jovanovski for Bure and Hedican is a big loss.

bret hedican wasn’t a number one d on a cup winner; that team had no number one. it didn’t even have any number twos. but sure, a 35 year old hedican played the most minutes, ahead of aaron ward, which kind of says it all.

 

[Hit the post]

bret hedican wasn’t a number one d on a cup winner; that team had no number one. it didn’t even have any number twos. but sure, a 35 year old hedican played the most minutes, ahead of aaron ward, which kind of says it all.

Ward had a Conn Smythe post season + Justin Williams taking out the eye of the leader of the Habs (imagine how how we would’ve lasted in the 1994 playoffs had somebody do that to Linden in the first round?)

 

[Canucks1096]

What I remember about this trade was Burke saying "Dave Gagner is the key to this deal" Kevin Weeks is the goalie of the future.

Only Jova made any impact.

 

[Canucks1096]

Burke was close in working out a deal with the Rangers. Cloutier Sundstrom and a 1st. Burke wanted Manny as well and Smith didn't want to trade him.

There another rumour as well. Bure Hedican for Palffy Berard

 

[innitfam]

It was always baffling to me that Hedican got sent to FLA as well.

As mentioned, Hedican was not far below Jovanovski in terms of value.

Whatever - trade was a loss given Bure's production in Florida but Jovo was good with us for a while. Wonder what other suitors may have paid though.

Also, LOL at the Kevin Weekes story. Hilarious.

 

[Blade Paradigm]

Burke was close in working out a deal with the Rangers. Cloutier Sundstrom and a 1st. Burke wanted Manny as well and Smith didn't want to trade him.

There another rumour as well. Bure Hedican for Palffy Berard

The greatest curiosity about this trade was the potential for Bure to play with Gretzky. Gretzky was highly familiar with Bure, having played so many games against him with the Los Angeles Kings. Pavel scored more goals and points against the Kings than any other team in the NHL.

Gretzky would have played one more season in the NHL had Bure joined the Rangers in 1999.

Larry Brooks wrote a piece about it the day after the trade.

https://nypost.com/1999/01/20/years-of-neil-neglect-cost-blueshirts-bure/

...

Who are all these young players that Smith keeps talking about? Christian Dube? Jeff Brown? Daniel Goneau? From the 1994, 1995 and 1996 drafts, only Cloutier and Marc Savard have turned out to be, will ever turn out to be, regular NHL players. Consistently, the Rangers have rated skill above grit in making selections at points of drafts where the blue-chip players are long gone.

So what else did the Rangers, really, have to offer to sweeten a pot, as long as they were going to make Malhotra, projected to be a solid third-line player, an touchable? Why would Vancouver GM Brian Burke even get back to Smith after Smith insisted Malhotra was a deal-breaker? Hoping that the Rangers would offer Mike Knuble? Savard? Scott Fraser?

The Canucks believed their most pressing needs were for a defenseman and a center, not a checking winger like Sundstrom, not a goalie like Dan Cloutier. If Malhotra couldn’t be part of the deal, then the best of Vancouver’s limited options probably was with Florida, no matter how much better Cloutier turns out to be than Kevin Weekes, if he turns out to be better at all.

The Panthers’ offer wasn’t great, just, for the Canucks’ purposes, a little better than the Rangers, who couldn’t raise it without risking just another of the kind of trade that has won them one Cup in 58 years.

...

Then again, the Rangers haven’t had too many young players, so maybe they don’t know how to nurture them. They obviously don’t know how to rate them, which is what is scary about making a checking center a deal-breaker when there was a chance to acquire a superstar.

...

Malhotra was a projected checking center -- a role that he developed into and played effectively in the NHL -, but Jovanovski was better than any piece in that potential Rangers deal.

It's just too bad that we couldn't get a year of Bure and Gretzky together.

On the Weekes robbery story: Fiction, friction on Canucks

 

[Canucks1096]

The greatest curiosity about this trade was the potential for Bure to play with Gretzky. Gretzky was highly familiar with Bure, having played so many games against him with the Los Angeles Kings. Pavel scored more goals and points against the Kings than any other team in the NHL.

Gretzky would have played one more season in the NHL had Bure joined the Rangers in 1999.

Larry Brooks wrote a piece about it the day after the trade.

https://nypost.com/1999/01/20/years-of-neil-neglect-cost-blueshirts-bure/

Malhotra was a projected checking center -- a role that he developed into and played effectively in the NHL -, but Jovanovski was better than any piece in that potential Rangers deal.

It's just too bad that we couldn't get a year of Bure and Gretzky together.

On the Weekes robbery story: Fiction, friction on Canucks

Canucks almost got 99 in 1996 as well but owners messed up that deal by telling Quinn to call 99 and asked him to sign now. When the Rangers did get Bure, 99 retired already.

 

[Jyrki21]

I was living abroad as an undergrad, in a very non-hockey part of the world, doing my best to keep tabs on the team despite a large time difference and the still-relatively nascent Internet coming to me by way of the all-text brower Lynx. Do the GenXers here remember that one? Basically, the web looked like this:

Bure had already expressed his desire to leave at the start of the previous season so we'd all basically been waiting for the other shoe to drop – Vancouver was, at that point, still considered (wrongly, I'd argue) a "small-market team" and in those days stars never lasted all that long to begin with outside of the larger markets, so I feel there was always at least a bit of insecurity woven into the relationship with Bure. (And that's always why flirting with the idea of Gretzky and ultimately signing Messier was such a shock to the system – in the days of rarer free agency, the Canucks just never did that kind of splash, and McCaw's backing funds were uncharted territory for this team).

So all I could do was check in from time to time, thrilled the day Keenan got canned, waiting... so in some ways it was a relief when it just simply happened, and I'm not sure Burke was ever going to have a better deal out there. (Note: this does not absolve the absolutely zero waiting in the case of, say, Kesler. There is a happy medium to be had).

I actually thought they made out OK at the time, in part because I figured Jovo was still a very hot commodity, and that team was actually building up a pretty promising defense. This did eventually prove to be true, but ironically it would come without McCabe or Aucoin (who was scoring like gangbusters that year out of nowhere) and with Sami Salo instead. I hadn't heard of Kevin Weekes as being highly touted so I was a bit surprised that he got the "goalie of the future" tab. Losing Hedican was rough, and I never had an ounce of expectation for Ference and was still irate at Quinn for drafting him high.

When Bure started facing injury troubles again, I still remember some people holding the view that the Canucks had made out better in the trade when all was said and done. They certainly got more games out of Jovo than the Panthers did Bure.

Canucks almost got 99 in 1996 as well but owners messed up that deal by telling Quinn to call 99 and asked him to sign now. When the Rangers did get Bure, 99 retired already.

It was George McPhee who phoned him and the circumstantial evidence indicates they we’re right about Gretzky using them to drive up NYR’s offer.

Yep, I've posted it before, but I'll repost it. The Gretzky story has always seemed off, and with the benefit of hindsight I don't think he was ever all that serious.
Post-Game Talk: - 18/19 Endless boilerplate arguments regarding Management thread | Pt. V. Oil up your mouse wheel.

If you’re referring to the Gretzky thing (which was 1996), keep in mind sober second thought since the incident has led to speculation that Gretzky was never all that serious about signing with the Canucks, but was rather using them to bargain with the Rangers.

And the evidence frankly makes sense. For one, his decision proves that Quinn was right to be nervous. Who makes a career-altering choice on the spot after their “mind is made up” because they got annoyed by a phone call? I’ll bet plenty of sports stars would be more taken aback by the team not showing desperation.

Secondly, I don’t believe for a second that his celebrity wife, after years of living in Los Angeles, was willing to take Vancouver over New York. To a lesser extent I’d think this of Wayne himself, but as a Canadian who had already spent years in Edmonton I assume he wouldn’t see it as the same sacrifice.

 

[PuckMunchkin]

Quinn Hughes coming up next year sure is a depressing thought.

Depressing times indeed.

Dont be silly.

 

[Horse McHindu]

Dont be silly.

So......you’re saying that I *should* be excited that Quinn Hughes, a man that some (Pierre Lebrun, etc.) are already pegging to be almost as good as Rasmus Dahlin, is coming here next year?

Getouttatown!

 

[PuckMunchkin]

So......you’re saying that I *should* be excited that Quinn Hughes, a man that some (Pierre Lebrun, etc.) are already pegging to be almost as good as Rasmus Dahlin, is coming here next year?

Getouttatown!

Oh crap you caught me. With your superior witsees. Trixy little Benningsters.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

somewhere in a box in my parents' house there is an old yellowed copy of that day's vancouver sun.

the dave gagner part of the trade was straight up depressing. and tbh, i didn't even think burkey was lying to us then, and he probably wasn't. gagner was just another in a long line of veteran centers the canucks brought in to replace murray craven (who himself was brought in to fill the 2nd line center hole that hadn't been filled since igor larionov walked). this was organizational MO, over three GMs.

first there was mike ridley (who pat quinn touted as the center to play between bure and mogilny), then peter zezel (one of mike keenan's sons), gagner was the last one. then they waited out messier's contract and rebuilt by bringing andrew cassels, who was also in his prime a borderline 1st line/very productive 2nd line center and in fact craven's former teammate with the whale during their overlapping career years. but the important difference is cassels was younger and not over the hill yet.

as we all know, dave gagner's finest contribution to the canucks was finding us chris tanev, who used to play rep with his son. what we sometimes forget is gagner got us a less desirable guy on that suburban toronto team too-- cody. i know he's long gone now but can we also blame him for delzaster and his own garbage son?

 

[theoriginalBCF]

Yep, I've posted it before, but I'll repost it. The Gretzky story has always seemed off, and with the benefit of hindsight I don't think he was ever all that serious.
Post-Game Talk: - 18/19 Endless boilerplate arguments regarding Management thread | Pt. V. Oil up your mouse wheel.

Gretzky says otherwise: I can't find a link unfortunately, maybe someone else can, but Wayne said clearly he thought he was going to be a Canuck and that it was Quinn calling him at I think 2 am insisting he sign the deal that ended it. And he wanted to be a Canuck because of Pavel.

 

[Hollywood Burrows]

Gretzky says otherwise: I can't find a link unfortunately, maybe someone else can, but Wayne said clearly he thought he was going to be a Canuck and that it was Quinn calling him at I think 2 am insisting he sign the deal that ended it. And he wanted to be a Canuck because of Pavel.

Yes he said that in an interview with elliotte friedman or some other hack. He's half in the bag these days and mostly concerned with tending to his legacy. I don't buy it, for many many reasons, but maybe the biggest one: Janet was not moving back to Canada after she already got Wayne out of here. Especially with NY as the alternative. Nobody with any sense goes against their wife in that situation.