During the lockout a rumour surfaced about Mathieu Schneider being traded. The rumoured deal had Schneider being sent to the Detroit Redwings, straight up, for Steve Yzerman. Schneider's stock was high then and I also think he was the main piece headed to New York for Turgeon.
i find that rumour very hard to believe. steve yzerman was steve yzerman. he wasn't a playoff hero (yet) but during the lockout he's coming off an injury-interrupted season where he was
6th in points/game, following a run of six straight hundred point seasons.
meanwhile, mathieu schneider is coming off a breakout season where he finished tied for
18th in scoring among defensemen (with yves racine and alexei zhitnik, sandwiched between jyrki lumme and sylvain cote). for reference, malakhov finished five points ahead, at 15th. the previous year, malakhov led all rookie defensemen in scoring and finished well ahead of schneider in both points and points/game.
say what you will about kirk muller but at least he had a pedigree. plus in 1995 he was coming off leading the habs in playoff scoring (no one in the seven game series loss to boston had more points than muller had goals), while schneider was injured for the second straight year. at the time of the trade, muller was still only two years removed from being hard-matched against sakic, lafontaine, and turgeon and outscoring all of them.