Worst Trade in the Doug Wilson Era
- Thread starter WSS11
- Start date
My proof is purely empirical but if the greatest rebuttal is “yeah, but the opposite could be true also” then I’m fairly confident in my assessment. Numbers don’t lie.
It becomes a questionable interpretation when it's a counterfactual. It stops being empirical evidence and just a guessing game because Pavs staying here yields different and unknowable results. You can't just copy and paste his production in Dallas to here and make comparisons.
While that’s true, if you’ve watched enough Dallas games and can’t deduce that what he brought to that team was pretty much what this team was missing then you’re not paying attention. Forget just the amazing deflections, the fact that we suck at zone entry and just puck control in the neutral zone and that no one seems to be able to complete a pass. Obviously it’s impossible to say with 100% certainty what his stats would have looked like, it’s not some random coincidence that his numbers remained consistent after leaving while the majority of the Sharks fell off cliffs. You can’t solely blame it on BB and his coaching staff because even before cleaning house in the middle of last season the entire team was struggling in the same way. Pavs simply was able to do the things no one on the current roster can nor wants to do.
And perhaps this is arrogance but I 100% believe his production would have remained steady here. If you can’t see that based on both numbers and by watching him play on a team with significantly less firepower up front then you’re just playing devil’s advocate.
There's no doubt the team suffered because they lost a significant amount of pieces but some of the issues you bring up are not Pavs specialties either like the zone entries and puck control in the neutral zone. Like he wasn't terrible at these things but he wasn't a main contributor either. I tend to believe he'd produce but I don't think it would change the team's fate.
On that last point I’d agree. I do think we’d be a better team with Pavs and minus Karlsson but it’s all moot.
Based on injuries, and the fact his numbers have decreased in 7 straight years while his defense has been as bad as its always been.
The Brad Boyes trade really has to be the worst.
Boyes was the center piece of the Nolan trade. He was considered one of the top prospects outside of the NHL. He played one game for the Sharks and was traded for Curtis Brown. Curtis Brown who played 12 regular season games and scored 2 goals. He then had 0 goals in 17 playoff games and left after the season. A bad player at the time of the trade, and not worth one of the top prospects in hockey.
Boyes went on to play over 800 NHL games, had a 40 goal season, and scored over 500 points.
Boyes is one of the select few young players that Doug moved out that didn't completely fizzle relative to the player traded for him.
That kind of asset management is stupid and inexplicable. A lot of the other trades that have been mentioned, like the Bonino trade, but in Bonino's case, he was not considered a top prospect and never reached the heights that Boyes did. Even if you compare the Karlsson trade and the Stutzle pick, Doug didn't know where the pick would end up at the time of the trade. If Doug knew how things would go I don't think he offers Ottawa the 3rd overall pick. Boyes was a known commodity at the time of the trade, and he had a ton of value, and Doug traded him for crap.
Boyes was the center piece of the Nolan trade. He was considered one of the top prospects outside of the NHL. He played one game for the Sharks and was traded for Curtis Brown. Curtis Brown who played 12 regular season games and scored 2 goals. He then had 0 goals in 17 playoff games and left after the season. A bad player at the time of the trade, and not worth one of the top prospects in hockey.
Boyes went on to play over 800 NHL games, had a 40 goal season, and scored over 500 points.
Boyes is one of the select few young players that Doug moved out that didn't completely fizzle relative to the player traded for him.
That kind of asset management is stupid and inexplicable. A lot of the other trades that have been mentioned, like the Bonino trade, but in Bonino's case, he was not considered a top prospect and never reached the heights that Boyes did. Even if you compare the Karlsson trade and the Stutzle pick, Doug didn't know where the pick would end up at the time of the trade. If Doug knew how things would go I don't think he offers Ottawa the 3rd overall pick. Boyes was a known commodity at the time of the trade, and he had a ton of value, and Doug traded him for crap.
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- Aug 14, 2011
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Trading Boyes for Brown was just awful. I could've been fine with trading Boyes for a rental but guys that were clearly available that week included Mike Grier, Valeri Bure, Chris Simon, Michael Nylander, Mike Sillinger, Petr Nedved, Alexei Kovalev, even Ville Nieminen were all better options for around the same sort of price. There's a good argument to be made that getting the wrong guy like he did with Brown maybe cost the team...it's especially damning when they knew Sturm was done before the deadline and all they did was get Brown.
