Teams and Cores that Disappointed

[Stephen]

I've been watching hockey for almost 20 years and one of the interesting things about that is I've been around long enough to watch an entire career cycle, being able to watch many prospects get scouted, drafted, make it to the NHL and also retire.

Being on hfboards and hockeysfuture, it's fun to counterbalance the gushing statistical and career projects and comparisons for prospects with the hindsight evaluations of who fell short.

That said, what players or groups of players and cores did you have high expectations for that ultimately fell short?

Some examples I can think of would be the Winnipeg Jets of the mid 90s, who at one point had Alexei Zhamnov, Keith Tkachuk, Teemu Selanne, Boris Mironov, Nikolai Khabibulin and a freshly drafted Shane Doan. It seemed like they had a bright future but things ultimately did not work out in any way shape or form for that team/franchise/city.

Other examples would be the Legion of Doom led Philadelphia Flyers, or the Joe Thornton/Sergei Samsonov core the Bruins assembled at the 1997 draft.

So in your experience, what are players and teams that ended up disappointing you?

Click to read more...

 

[maroon 6]

I think the west coast express era Canucks were a normal goalie away from impact...

And time is running out for Thornton/Marleau

 

[sens1]

Heatley, Spezza, Alfie, Havlat, Chara, Phillips, Volchenkov, Redden, Fisher, Hasek(well at least he was supposed to be there) etc... Cant believe sens could never win the championship with a group of players like that(well most of them were there for a while) mostly young and close to their primes.

 

[KingGallagherXI]

The cores of Gretzky - Robitaille - Blake and Roenick - Chelios - Belfour in the early 1990's come to mind...

 

[Unaffiliated]

Gretzky + Hull?

 

[DisgruntledGoat*]

The Naslund/Bertuzzi Canucks and the Alfredsson/Spezza/Heatley Sens are what immediately springs to mind.

In terms of strictly prospect pools, I thought the Thrashers had drafted two impact forwards (Heatley, Kovalchuk), a defenseman (Coburn), and a goalie (Lehtonen) in successive drafts.

 

[TheMoreYouKnow]

In terms of coming short, well the late 70s/early 80s Bruins, certainly would be seen as a prominent example. Orr and Espo were gone but Ratelle and Park were added and there were still guys like O'Reilly, Cashman, Sheppard, McNab and Middleton. And then of course Ray Bourque came into the picture as well.

In the late 80s, early 90s of course you had Bourque and Neely in his prime, playmakers in Janney and then Oates, some solid D-men like Galley and Wesley, Moog wasn't a bad goalie either.

In both cases disappointment is maybe a strong word given the competition they faced and they had bad timing, but you can't tell me Boston wasn't disappointed that Bourque had to go somewhere else to win a Cup.

 

[I Hate Blake Coleman]

The Flames core of the late 80s should have won more than 1 Cup.

 

[Ilya Kovalchoke*]

Ottawa seems like a good choice. Alffy, Spezza, Heater, Havlat, Redden, Chara, Fisher, Hashek, Philips, etc.

 

[JackSlater]

Chicago from 1962-1972 should have won more Cups with the core that they had.

 

[Canadarocks]

I had high hopes for the Thrashers in the early 2000s. They weren't good but they had two of the greatest young players in the league (Heatley and Kovalchuk) on the team. I thought they would be contenders for the cup later in the decade. Less than ten years later, they are both gone.

 

[Mayor Bee]

The Flames core of the late 80s should have won more than 1 Cup.

Indeed. It was analyzed a bit further on this thread:

http://hfboards.com/showthread.php?t=817333

 

[Epsilon]

The Blues in the late 1990s-early 2000s.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

^ in 1990-'91, the blues had two of the top four offensive players in the league, hull and oates, and those guys had something really special together. their captain was a no nonsense hard hitting defenseman who could also put up major points, scott stevens. they had a really promising young goalie, curtis joseph. on top of that, they had one of the best powerplay quarterbacks in the league in jeff brown, a young rod brind'amour, a highly regarded young offensive defenseman in paul cavallini, the reigning selke winner rick meagher, they had good secondary scoring in geoff courtnall and cliff ronning, a big tough customer in sergio momesso, a promising young nelson emerson, and another able young goalie in vincent riendeau.

that team had a lot of really good pieces, most of them in or approaching their prime, and should have been a yearly contender. but it was almost all gone in just a couple of years.

the first disastrous move was trading their entire second line (courtnall, ronning, momesso) to vancouver for much needed toughness on the back end (garth butcher) and an enigmatic soft scorer (dan quinn). they would never have scoring depth again after that. hull and oates had to play with frickin' dave lowry.

meagher, who was their heart and soul captain before stevens, had an injury-riddled year and retired after the playoffs.

then of course, they had to give up scott stevens when they signed brendan shanahan in the off-season.

they traded brind'amour for the solid but not game-changing murray baron. more secondary scoring gone.

they tried to get some scoring back by trading cavallini for kevin miller.

then they refuse to pay oates and sent him away for another softie in craig janney.

and also traded nelson emerson for phil housley.

traded butcher for steve duchesne.

all this time, they have no first round picks and their best guys coming up are bret hedican, denis chasse, and philippe bozon-- and guy hebert, who they lost in the expansion draft. there was also the russian experiment, where they wasted their precious few draft picks on igor korolev, vitali prokhorov, and vitali prokhorov, all overaged guys from the russian league, in the same year. yeah, there's your second line.

then, as if they hadn't learned anything from the last few years, they sign petr nedved and are forced to give up craig janney as compensation. they turn around and trade jeff brown, presumably made expendable because they now had housley and duchesne, and almost all their youth in hedican and nathan lafayette.

after that '91 season, they always had elite talent in hull, shanahan, and one playmaking center for them to share, but very little in the way of role players or character guys. it was always shortcuts with this team, signing stevens, then shanahan, then nedved; trying to rebuild the forward depth by drafting an entire line of veterans from the CSKA. i guess you can justify the stevens signing, but even then they lost five years of first round prospects, which really crippled this team. dynamite powerplay though.

then mike keenan came in and cleaned house. shanahan for pronger, housley for macinnis, cujo for to get some draft picks back, janney for jeff norton for keenan favourite igor kravchuk, hull walks. good talent came in, but ultimately that was just the birth of another regular season powerhouse but ultimately disappointing blues team.

 

[mrhockey193195]

The Flames core of the late 80s should have won more than 1 Cup.

That was more because the team was torn apart though, not because they disappointed (though they still should've done better with who was left in the early 90s, IMO).

One that comes to mind right off the bat is St. Louis from the early 2000s. Weight, Tkachuk, Turgeon, Demitra, Pronger, MacInnis, Stillman, Young. They just never had goaltending, except that one year that Osgood was there. Those Blues teams should have done much better than they did.

 

[Big Phil]

Funny I'm mentioning this, but either one of the Avs 1996 or 2001 teams come up short. Yes, they won the Cup but it's a little hard to believe they didn't win more. Some of the core was the same but there were differences as well.

It remains to be seen, but we'll see what happens with Crosby/Malkin/Staal/Fleury. That 2010 series vs. Montreal was just atrocious and who knows if they'll ever be all healthy enough again.

Mario/Jagr in the mid to late 1990s. Had Mario not retired and had they gotten past Dave Lowry (shudder) and the Florida Panthers in 1996 maybe things are different

You can blame Mike Milbury for this one but the Islanders had every piece in place to be a potential dynasty. They drafted well but made some horrible trades. Luongo for Dipietro was comical then, and now it's just sad. Look at the team the 1997-'98 Isles had: McCabe, Berard and Chara on defense. Palffy and Reichel and Bertuzzi up front. Luongo and Brewer had just been drafted the year before. You can assume they'd have still been bad in the late 1990s and gotten some more high draft picks. Maybe the 2000 draft they pick Heatley. That team would still be good, but they'd have been extremely good in the 2000s.

 

[connellc]

The Rangers teams of the early 2000's come to mind, especially the 2002 team which missed the playoff's completly and had just added a red hot Pavel Bure to an already stacked team. On that team you had Richter, Bure, Lindros, Theo Fleury, Leetch, Messier, Nedved, Berard,Rucinsky.


Also in 2002, you had a stacked Pens team with Lemieux, Jagr, Kovalev, Straka, Lang.

My team, the Detroit Red Wings, Should have more to show for druing the early/mid 90's. There Centers for years were Yzerman, Fedorov, Primeau. Add Dino, Ray Sheppard and Paul Coffey, and you have a pretty solid core group there for a few years.

 

[kmad]

Simmer-Dionne-Taylor

 

[The Grouch]

^ in 1990-'91, the blues had two of the top four offensive players in the league, hull and oates, and those guys had something really special together. their captain was a no nonsense hard hitting defenseman who could also put up major points, scott stevens. they had a really promising young goalie, curtis joseph. on top of that, they had one of the best powerplay quarterbacks in the league in jeff brown, a young rod brind'amour, a highly regarded young offensive defenseman in paul cavallini, the reigning selke winner rick meagher, they had good secondary scoring in geoff courtnall and cliff ronning, a big tough customer in sergio momesso, a promising young nelson emerson, and another able young goalie in vincent riendeau.

that team had a lot of really good pieces, most of them in or approaching their prime, and should have been a yearly contender. but it was almost all gone in just a couple of years.

the first disastrous move was trading their entire second line (courtnall, ronning, momesso) to vancouver for much needed toughness on the back end (garth butcher) and an enigmatic soft scorer (dan quinn). they would never have scoring depth again after that. hull and oates had to play with frickin' dave lowry.

meagher, who was their heart and soul captain before stevens, had an injury-riddled year and retired after the playoffs.

then of course, they had to give up scott stevens when they signed brendan shanahan in the off-season.

they traded brind'amour for the solid but not game-changing murray baron. more secondary scoring gone.

they tried to get some scoring back by trading cavallini for kevin miller.

then they refuse to pay oates and sent him away for another softie in craig janney.

and also traded nelson emerson for phil housley.

traded butcher for steve duchesne.

all this time, they have no first round picks and their best guys coming up are bret hedican, denis chasse, and philippe bozon-- and guy hebert, who they lost in the expansion draft. there was also the russian experiment, where they wasted their precious few draft picks on igor korolev, vitali prokhorov, and vitali prokhorov, all overaged guys from the russian league, in the same year. yeah, there's your second line.

then, as if they hadn't learned anything from the last few years, they sign petr nedved and are forced to give up craig janney as compensation. they turn around and trade jeff brown, presumably made expendable because they now had housley and duchesne, and almost all their youth in hedican and nathan lafayette.

after that '91 season, they always had elite talent in hull, shanahan, and one playmaking center for them to share, but very little in the way of role players or character guys. it was always shortcuts with this team, signing stevens, then shanahan, then nedved; trying to rebuild the forward depth by drafting an entire line of veterans from the CSKA. i guess you can justify the stevens signing, but even then they lost five years of first round prospects, which really crippled this team. dynamite powerplay though.

then mike keenan came in and cleaned house. shanahan for pronger, housley for macinnis, cujo for to get some draft picks back, janney for jeff norton for keenan favourite igor kravchuk, hull walks. good talent came in, but ultimately that was just the birth of another regular season powerhouse but ultimately disappointing blues team.

This is a good one. It's ridiculous the way Blues management let those players slip away.


I was a big fan of the mid-late 90's Flyers. Lindros, Leclair, Brindamour, Hextall, Desjardins, Otto, and Svoboda. They did make the finals in 1997, but I expected more from that team.

 

[TheMoreYouKnow]

The fact that so many of those teams overlap shows just how hard it can be to win a Cup when there's so many talented teams and only one team can hold the Cup at the end of the year.

I always thought it's weird that a lot of fans seem to want players to stick with one team all their career but then still hold lack of Cup wins against them.

 

[tony d]

Kariya and Selanne in 2003-2004 where supposed to dominate in Colorado as they did Anaheim, that did not happen.

 

[Dennis Bonvie]

Chicago from 1962-1972 should have won more Cups with the core that they had.

That's a good one.

 

[SlingshotVv]

Kariya and Selanne in 2003-2004 where supposed to dominate in Colorado as they did Anaheim, that did not happen.

wow, i forgot about that team.

kariya, selanne, sakic, forsberg, tanguay, hejduk, konowalchuk,

and foote, blake, liles, morris, and skoula on the back end.

and Aebischer actually put up decent numbers for a team that should've scored as much as they were supposed to. 62GP, 32W, 2.09GAA, and .924SV%, 4SO

 

[TheStranger]

wow, i forgot about that team.

kariya, selanne, sakic, forsberg, tanguay, hejduk, konowalchuk,

and foote, blake, liles, morris, and skoula on the back end.

and Aebischer actually put up decent numbers for a team that should've scored as much as they were supposed to. 62GP, 32W, 2.09GAA, and .924SV%, 4SO

The Avs being bottom feeders is nothing compared to that season as far as disappointment goes. So much hype around that team...they were talking about them possibly approaching the most goals scored ever by a team records and things like that. First game of the season, 5-0 romp looked like they were on their way....and it all went down hill from there.

 

[Stephen]

then mike keenan came in and cleaned house. shanahan for pronger, housley for macinnis, cujo for to get some draft picks back, janney for jeff norton for keenan favourite igor kravchuk, hull walks. good talent came in, but ultimately that was just the birth of another regular season powerhouse but ultimately disappointing blues team.

If I remember correctly, Keenan came in and muddled things up even more with his revolving door. Traded Cujo for Shayne Corson, brought in Gretzky for Hull, both ended up leaving, but made a few good moves to get MacInnis for Housley and Pronger for Shanahan. Got Grant Fuhr in net, and had a whole bunch of ex-Oilers and ex-Hawks as muckers and veterans on their last legs. Basically the least glamorous team ever with absolutely no youth pipeline.