The greatest trade tree in San Jose Sharks history: Post-Karlsson trade revisit (HUGE pic warning)

[LeftHeartInSF]

What an incredible trip down memory lane.

 

[uncleben]

A little late to the party, but I just saw this as a featured article and wanted to share my trade tree, as well

 

[Plural]

This is awesome. I'd love to see more of these.

 

[ChompChomp]

I meant who was our idiot GM during that time. In general, without any knowledge of what players are available at each spot, that trade is heavily slanted in favor of Hartford from a value perspective.

That GM for the Sharks sucked, but that wasn't his terrible move. Really that trade where TB was insured the #1 overall pick was the bad move. Phil Esposito had openly said on SiriusXM NHL a few years back that TB got one over on the Sharks to insure they could build Tampa Bay around Vinny Lecavalier, i.e., it wasn't a fluke when they pitched that trade to the Sharks and Sharks fell for it hook, line and sinker.

But hey, glad we have Erik Karlsson now. (And I suppose our GM is the one who dupes other GMs).

 

[uncleben]

This is awesome. I'd love to see more of these.

I've got a couple more San Jose ones, I think.
I'll try to post them tonight, if I remember!

 

[Brodeur]

My question is, what kind of brain dead GM was trading a 2nd overall pick for the 6th overall, a 2nd round pick, and a 3rd round pick?

Thanks for doing all this work Nem. I had no idea we could have drafted Chris Pronger.

Apologies for the random bump, but I got in a late night rabbit hole regarding the 1993 draft and this thread came up. This draft was a few years before I really became a full fledged hockey fan, so it's been fun to learn things after the fact. Just a spoiler warning, the Sharks turned down a different future Hall of Famer for the pick as well.

At the time, San Jose didn't have a traditional management set up. Owner Gordon Gund fired Jack Ferreira after the Sharks' inaugural season. There was a bit of a co-GM situation between Chuck Grillo (executive VP and director of player personnel) and Dean Lombardi (director of hockey operations). This led to issues as anybody who's co-managed a team in a fantasy league could understand. When Grillo was fired in 1996, Lombardi noted that the locker room would no longer be his guys vs. Grillo's guys.

Ray Payne Wanted Chris Pronger, Tim Burke Wanted Paul Kariya in 1993 NHL Draft

If Ray Payne had his way, Chris Pronger would’ve been drafted by the San Jose Sharks. Going into the 1993 Draft, the Sharks held the second-overall pick. Alexandre Daigle was the consensus No. 1. The NHL’s Central Scouting Bureau had future Hall of Famer Pronger after Daigle among North American...

sanjosehockeynow.com

I found this Sheng Peng article which mentions how the scouts were split. Tim Burke (based in New England) wanted Paul Kariya. San Jose's OHL scout wanted Pronger. But Grillo wanted Kozlov. One of the scouts said that Grillo envisioned San Jose as the "World's Team." At the 1992 Draft, 7 of San Jose's 11 picks were European; Maybe they would have taken Alexei Yashin had he been available #3 as well? San Jose took Yashin's teammate Andrei Nazarov at #10.

Today, there was a Pronger tidbit on Jeff Marek's podcast (probably the catalyst in me looking up this info again). He said that the Sharks interviewed Pronger before the draft but told him that they wouldn't be taking him. Unfortunately their rationale was that they were set on defensemen and needed a center prospect.

At the time, the D in the system:
Sandis Ozolinsh - 20 years old - productive rookie season (23 points in 37 games)
Mike Rathje - 19 years old - 49 points in 57 WHL games
Michal Sykora - 19 years old - 73 points in 70 WHL games
Marcus Ragnarsson - 21 years old

Also in the moment, young Russians were the new hotness:
Alexander Mogilny - led the NHL with 76 goals
Pavel Bure - 60 goals
Sergei Fedorov - point per game while getting Selke consideration

For better or worse, San Jose settled on Kozlov as their guy. They figured they could trade down and still get him. Three teams were the primary suitors: Hartford, Quebec, and the NY Rangers.

I haven't been able to find a ballpark idea of what the Rangers were offering, but apparently they were declined because their first rounder (8th overall) was too late. Somebody uploaded the 1993 Draft on YouTube and the broadcast mentioned that Edmonton may have taken Kozlov had he been available at #7.

Quebec, the hosts of the 1993 Draft, wanted to make a splash. While the sexier headlines had them pursuing the #1 pick for Alexandre Daigle, they were actually trying to get the #2 pick to get Pronger. Quebec was overflowing with young forwards, so it made perfect sense to try to get a young D (they'd eventually deal Owen Nolan for Ozolinsh after moving to Colorado).

Apparently they tried to offer Mike Ricci to Tampa Bay for #3, then would have swapped spots with San Jose presumably for some extra picks. Ricci was 21 and fresh off a 78 point season. But Tampa Bay refused the bait, possibly because they were bleeding money and preferred to have Chris Gratton on a rookie contract.

The juicy bit is that Quebec made a last minute offer of an unsigned Peter Forsberg for the pick. Lombardi vented after the draft about Quebec's hectic negotiation style. We were only a year removed from Quebec managing to trade Eric Lindros twice.

NASLUND FITS COST-CONSCIOUS PANTHERS' BILL

The Florida Panthers could sign as many as four free agents this week, but no prize would be greater than Markus Naslund or Peter Forsberg.

web.archive.org

So why did San Jose turn down Forsberg? It wasn't about the talent.

Before the 1993 Draft, Markus Naslund sued the league regarding his free agent status. The NHL relented thereby allowing Naslund and Peter Forsberg to be Group IV restricted free agents. Unlike Group I/II RFAs, a team received no compensation if they didn't match a Group IV offer sheet. In the summer of 1992, Calgary unsuccessfully signed Teemu Selanne to a Group IV offer sheet which Winnipeg begrudgingly matched.

Due to the lack minute offer, San Jose got no time to negotiate with Forsberg. There were rumors that the Rangers might offer Forsberg a 4-5 million dollar signing bonus. Back in those days, some teams barely had a 10 million dollar payroll. San Jose didn't want to risk trading for Forsberg and be in a spot where they couldn't financially match an offer, thus getting nothing for the 2nd overall pick. Lombardi was upset, more or less saying that they would have taken Forsberg had Quebec made the offer earlier and they could have signed him.

Hartford had the inside track to pull off a trade since they had a high pick (#6). In his autobiography, Burke said that it didn't look like it would get done the night before. It seemed like San Jose settled on their offer rather than being floored by it. Along with the extra picks, Burke acquired Sergei Makarov from Calgary and included him in the trade. San Jose had offer sheeted (Group III RFA) Makarov a year earlier but Calgary matched. Not sure if San Jose was envisioning pairing Makarov with Igor Larionov back in 1992.

One final amusing layer to the onion was that Hartford had to include a conditional 1994 1st rounder if Kozlov was not available at #6 in order for the Sharks to agree to the deal. Burke says that the only people who knew about that were Hartford, San Jose, and NHL Central Registry.

Then at some point, Florida GM Bobby Clarke approached Burke on the draft floor and said they were taking Kozlov at #5. Clarke asked for a draft pick to change his mind. Burke was pissed about being extorted but he didn't want to call Clarke's bluff. So Hartford forked over a 1994 2nd rounder (ended up 31st overall) to Florida for absolutely nothing. Clarke/Florida was going to take Rob Niedermayer regardless. To this day, Burke is still fuming about that.

After getting full autonomy in 1996, Lombardi started purging the Sharks rosters of "Grillo's guys." Kozlov at least ended up netting Brad Stuart and Jonathan Cheechoo, and Stuart was a centerpiece in procuring Joe Thornton.

Definitely an interesting thought exercise picturing an alternate universe where Peter Forsberg is a Shark and Chris Pronger is a Nordique/Avalanche.

 

[Pavelski2112]

The Sharks are literally cursed

 

[The Nemesis]

Since this for bumped I'll take a minute to note that the only addition to the tree since its creation is that Francis Person was traded to Vancouver around the 2019 draft with other picks of no consequence for the expiring contract of Tom Pyatt (who left to play a couple years in Europe before retiring) and a 2019 7th round pick that became Timur Ibragimov (currently playing in the ECHL). So with Thornton gone the legacy of the tree now rests entirely on the futures of Karlsson and Ibragimov.

 

[sharski]

So Grillo was racist in his draft considerations dafuq

 

[Brodeur]

That GM for the Sharks sucked, but that wasn't his terrible move. Really that trade where TB was insured the #1 overall pick was the bad move. Phil Esposito had openly said on SiriusXM NHL a few years back that TB got one over on the Sharks to insure they could build Tampa Bay around Vinny Lecavalier, i.e., it wasn't a fluke when they pitched that trade to the Sharks and Sharks fell for it hook, line and sinker.

That was an interesting trade, essentially Dean Lombardi turned Florida's lottery odds into an asset. When the trade was made, Florida was on a long losing streak and likely the 2nd worst team in the league behind Tampa. Expansion Nashville was automatically slotted #2 going into the lottery and given the same odds as Florida.

1. Tampa (28%)
2. Nashville (18.5%)
3. San Jose (via Florida) (18.5%)
4. Vancouver (10.9%)
5. Anaheim (7.9%)
6. Calgary (5.7%)
7. NY Rangers (4.1%)
8. Toronto (2.8%)
9. NY Islanders (1.9%)
10. Chicago (1.2%)
11. Carolina (0.5%)

It was a gamble, but Lombardi had an 81.5% chance that the pick swap turned into nothing.

And with hindsight, we know there was a gap between Lecavalier and Legwand. But in the moment, most everybody had Lecavalier #1 but they didn't think Legwand was that far behind.

A few years later, Columbus basically did the same thing and traded a 2003 pick swap to Florida to switch spots at the 2002 Draft. Columbus got Rick Nash at #1 because they were paranoid that Philadelphia was going to trade to #2 for him.

And then the following year, Florida was worse than Columbus and ended up winning the lottery with their own odds. In the end, Columbus gave up nothing to secure Nash.

 

[The Nemesis]

Necro-bump to note that there are updates to this.

Also yes I'm aware the image is wonky in post #1. It appears in the last few years that attachments have undergone some alterations as the original upload wasn't showing and now that I edited the post to re-upload it it no longer zooms to full full size (making some of the text difficult to read.) I can try to upload it to a different image host at some other point maybe.

Anyway the updates are that last time we left this thread everything was in the hands of Timur Ibragimov (having been acquired via a draft pick received from Vancouver in trade for Francis Perron) and Erik Karlsson. Well lo and behold both those players have spun off into significant assets.

1) Ibragimov was part of the package sent to New Jersey for F Andreas Johnsson, D Nikita Okhotiuk, F Fabian Zetterlund, D Shakir Mukhamadullin, a 2023 1st (used to select Quintin Musty), and a conditional 2024 pick (if the Devils make the conference finals round this year it's a 1st. If not it's a 2nd. There also appears to be a GP requirement for Meier but the only reference I can find says it was for how much he played last season post-trade so I think it should be satisfied). Johnsson has already left for nothing, but everyone else is in play.

2) Karlsson was traded to the Penguins for F Mike Hoffman, F Mikael Granlund, D Jan Rutta, and a 2024 1st.

So that means that this tree keeps on giving in the form of Okhotiuk, Zetterlund, Granlund, Hoffman, Rutta, Mukhamadullin, Musty, a 2024 1st and either another 2024 1st or a 2nd. And there's every chance that they manage to flip potentially Granlund and Hoffman for more stuff.

Chris Pronger is the gift that keeps on giving!

 

[Hangemhigh]

I just want to say Dumbardi sucked.

 

[Chinaski89]

This is Nem

 

[YUPPY]

The prized acquisition of the Devils' 2022-23 trade deadline has nine goals and 15 points through 28 games this season. Timo Meier this season had been playing hurt. He just has a new injury.

Games: 28

Goals: 9

Assits:6

points: 15

Fabian Zetterlund after 38 games this season 23-24

Games: 38

Goals: 11

Assists: 5

Points: 16

 

[PacificOceanPotion]

The prized acquisition of the Devils' 2022-23 trade deadline has nine goals and 15 points through 28 games this season. Timo Meier this season had been playing hurt. He is just has a new injury.

Games: 28

Goals: 9

Assits:6

points: 15

Fabian Zetterlund after 38 games this season 23-24

Games: 38

Goals: 11

Assists: 5

Points: 16

Outside of goals and pts, I LOVE the way Zetterlund plays the game overall.

 

[timorous me]

Outside of goals and pts, I LOVE the way Zetterlund plays the game overall.

I tried to convince people of this last season after the trade but for some reason NOBODY WOULD LISTEN!!!###*@@*$@)$)@!)!!!

 

[landshark]