The 25th overall pick in this year’s draft has been on a bit of a journey.
The story starts at last year’s deadline. The pick originally belonged to the Lightning, but they traded it to the Kraken in a deal for Oliver Bjorkstrand and Yanni Gourde. The pick stayed with the Kraken until this weekend, when they shipped it to Florida for Mackie Samoskevich. We didn’t realize it at the time, but the Panthers had something even bigger in mind, flipping the pick to Ottawa few hours later in the Brady Tkachuk blockbuster. Now we wait to see if Ottawa uses the pick, or moves it again for immediate help.
Not a bad story for one pick. And I’ll be honest, I kind of love when this happens. Some picks have lived a full life before they’re ever actually used to draft a player. I remember as a kid being fascinated that the biggest trade of 1992 – the Eric Lindros blockbuster – and the biggest of 1994 – Mats Sundin for Wendel Clark – both involved the same pick, one that started off in Philadelphia before heading to Quebec, then Toronto, and ultimately on to Washington (where it was used on Nolan Baumgartner, who played just 143 NHL games).
Today, let’s go back through the cap era and see if we can find some picks that have stories to tell. We’ll set the bar high, looking for picks that changed hands at least four times. We’ll rely on the invaluable Pro Sports Transactions database, and see where this takes us.
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