Sylvain Lefevre ended up being the bigger piece of the deal, I remember him playing huge minutes with the Avs cup run.
2 eastern conference finals, not to dissimilar to Clark run.
Has for the trade, could have been an horrible disaster for the Nordiques, but they got Lemieux in a 3 team trade (with Steve Thomas) if a remember correctly, with Lemieux they trade Nolan for Ozolinsh and they win the cup and are well happy. Still the parallel universe in which they keep Sundin/Sakic/Nolan/Forsberg together could have been quite something.
lefebvre might indeed have been a more important player on that '96 avs team than lemieux. at the very least, it's close and maybe claude poking the bear puts lefebvre, a very good defensive 1a on a team that really needed one, ahead.
and i don't think it was lemieux that made nolan expendable, it was deadmarsh clicking on a line with sakic and kamensky to start the '96 season. re: the nords/avs point of view, ima dust this off again—
here's a timeline that gives maybe some more context for that trade:
april, 1993: ridiculously skilled but very green team makes a historic jump in the standings, is up two games to zero in the playoffs, then proceeds to lose four straight to the canadiens, who have much more experience... plus the greatest goalie of all time. coach/GM pierre pagé singles out sundin and andrei kovalenko as two guys who seemed too happy to just be there.
defense corps is steve duchesne, a very young adam foote, curtis leschyshyn, craig wolanin, alexei gusarov, kerry huffman, and david karpa. hardly a murderer's row.
starting goalie is ron hextall, who did not acquit himself well in the losses. former goalie of the future stephane fiset starting to run out of chances.
draft day, 1993: drafts jocelyn thibault, considered by some to be the best goalie prospect since sean burke/jimmy waite to be new goalie of the future. trades hextall to move from 23rd to 13th and draft rugged WHL winger adam deadmarsh.
summer, 1993: contract negotiations with PMD steve duchesne, coming off a career 82 point season, stall.
fall, 1994: pagé rushes thibault into the league, splitting duties between him and fiset. begins the season without duchesne, hence no PMD. owen nolan gets injured for the season on the sixth game of the season. team stumbles out of the gate, with just five wins in october and three in november.
january, 1994: quebec trades holdout steve duchesne, coming off a career 82 point season, for three tough and very defensive-minded players: ron sutter (who had tonnes of playoff experience with the flyers), bob bassen, and garth butcher.
may, 1994: after a disastrous step back season where the team failed to make the playoffs, pierre pagé is fired. marc crawford hired as coach and more importantly pierre lacroix hired as GM.
draft day, 1994: two trades. sundin out, wendel clark in; butcher out, sylvain lefebvre in; ron sutter out, uwe krupp in. also trades down on three draft picks: todd warriner (former #4) for landon wilson (former #19); #9 to #12 (i.e., brett lindros for wade belak); #10 to #22 (i.e., nolan baumgartner for jeff kealty).
the moral of the story? the '93 team lost because there were lots and lots and lots of high picks (nolan, sundin, leschyshyn, ricci) and other young scoring hotshots (sakic, kamensky, rucinsky, kovalenko), but very little toughness and almost no experience. the three guys they got back had been to the third round a combined five times in the previous two seasons, the two defensemen averaged 6'4, 220 lbs between them, and wendel clark played a level of toughness and urgency that the team had previously lacked.
what did they lose? an aging garth butcher, who was replaced by two big, tough, steady defensemen in their primes; two more top ten draft picks they didn't need; and two young high picks. one of the young high picks was a bust (warriner), the other was a future hall of famer, pierre pagé's whipping boy mats sundin.
even the draft picks all signaled a new directions: wilson, belak (RIP), and kealty were all big useless plugs. but you win some (deadmarsh) and you lose some.
may, 1995: after a bounce back regular season, with sakic and nolan among the league leaders in points and goals, respectively; forsberg as advertised and scoring at above a point/game pace to win the calder; and team finishing 2nd overall in the standings (center depth is sakic, forsberg, ricci; RW depth is nolan, scott young, kovalenko, and rookie deadmarsh. so who needed sundin, anyway?), the team in its last season in quebec loses to the rangers in the first round. thibault did okay and flashed a lot of promise, but fiset, who was the presumptive starter, just wasn't good enough.
october, 1995: three things happen: 1. wendel clark is traded for reigning conn smythe winner and two-time stanley cup champion claude lemieux, 2. adam deadmarsh clicks on a line with sakic and kamensky, and 3. owen nolan, now a luxury due to deadmarsh's emergence, is traded to fill the steve duchesne hole that had been vacant for two years.
december, 1995: after a long string of trades beginning with the lindros one where they kept trading one great thing for multiple lesser things to plug some holes, lacroix does the opposite: thibault, rucinsky, and kovalenko for patrick roy. and rejean houle even threw in mike keane so he could make the french-speaking pierre turgeon captain. avalanche too green? sakic doesn't know how to win? enter patrick roy, claude lemieux, mike keane, and sylvain lefebvre.
i think what all this tells us is that the sundin trade was really just the most extreme case in a long run from '93 to '96 where that quebec/colorado team didn't have enough experience, wasn't good enough in its own end, wasn't tough enough, didn't have a PMD, and didn't have the greatest goalie ever and then got all those things. then it won the stanley cup. mission accomplished.
