Worst trade in hockey history

[Talisman]

Kings trading Paul Coffey for Jimmy Carson in 1993 may have cost them a Cup, considering that Carson accomplished very little in the 1993 playoffs (and the rest of his career.)

i never understand why penguins trade Paul coffey away
Acquired Paul Coffey from Pittsburgh for Brian Benning, Jeff Chychrun and a first-round choice in the 1992 NHL Entry Draft.

 

[ironpatriothockey27]

Yeah that in no way justifies the trade. In fact, if you were to ask me, it made it worse, but we won't go there.

What the trade did for L.A. or all of California or Mexico or Yugoslavia or whoever has no barring on how dumb it was for Edmonton. The argument that they won a Cup 2 years later still doesn't justify it either. They were fortunate to still have other pieces in place (Messier, Kurri, Simpson, Ranford coming up huge of course), but that compared to what they could have been is nothing. I think it's mostly those who weren't around at the time who say that stuff.

I've heard many say that the oilers would have won anywhere from 2-5 more Cups on top of that last one had they kept Gretzky. I argue that 1-2 is more realistic, but that's still pretty big regardless, and the overall big picture of what trading the best player in the league and to a guy who to most is the best player of all-time did to not only a franchise but an entire city has to be realized. They were completely hosed, and what the trade was all about ($$) has to be realized as well.

Makes me wonder if the Kings would have stayed in LA to this day had they not made that Gretzky trade?

 

[rick hawk]

Esposito to Boston dramatically changed the fortunes of the Hawks and Bruins for a decade.

 

[tailgunner]

carl hagelin for emerson etem
a true abomination of a trade

 

[The Panther]

When Nixon met Mao in 1973 or whenever, they talked about the French Revolution (starting in 1789) and Mao told Nixon it was still much too soon to determine the long-term result of that event. I feel the same way about the Gretzky commodity-sale in 1988. It's still too soon to determine the ultimate effect of that. But it was and still is cataclysmic.

 

[Sanf]

Old threaad, but did not want to start new. This came to my memory when going back my other researches.

So when Regina Capitals franchise moved to Portland (in WHL) they quite immediatly made a really bad trade. They traded Eddie Shore and Art Gagne to Eskimos for Joe McCormick and Bob Trapp. Apparently the reasoning was that Rosebuds wanted seasoned D and got that with Trapp. Gagne was the point leader of that season and Shore end up being All-Star.

Now as it really bad trade at the time (though Trapp was all-star that season with Shore) it has quite big historical what ifs. Because Eskimos was sold piece by piece which led Shore to Bruins and Gagne to Canadiens. But Rosebuds team was sold as whole to be the Chicago Black Hawks. So without that trade it would have been very likely that Shore would have started his NHL career as Hawk.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

Team trading Luongo was roped all 3 times.

and now that the markstrom era in vancouver, coming off a 4th place vezina finish and an upset against the defending champs, what a difference four years makes eh?

 

[Voight]

and now that the markstrom era in vancouver, coming off a 4th place vezina finish and an upset against the defending champs, what a difference four years makes eh?

No kidding. I always hoped Markstrom would make something of himself, I gained a lot of respect for him during the World Juniors. Luongo did do better than I thought in FLA, getting 4th and 9th place Vezina finishes.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

No kidding. I always hoped Markstrom would make something of himself, I gained a lot of respect for him during the World Juniors. Luongo did do better than I thought in FLA, getting 4th and 9th place Vezina finishes.

markstrom had a 4th and 10th. both luongo's and markstrom's 9th/10th place were a single third place vote.

but i do agree florida luongo pt 2 was better than vancouver markstrom by a bit. he played more games (255 vs 229), won more games (122 v 99), and generally had better stats.

 

[Nerowoy nora tolad]

In hindsight if a legit owner like Weston's or Esso or Labatts had bought the Oiler's (or Jets... Nords) history could have been different. But it wasn't so we saw what we did.

Interesting because that time period also lines up with when Labatt sold the Jays, really marking the end of them as a top franchise. Labatt saw them in terms of an aid to the brand (if the Jays are good, we sell more beer), whereas the new owners in Interbrew saw it solely as a financial investment.

I guess brewers being associated with sports teams went through a dip in the nineties for some reason