It's not just you, Sid: Remembering six legends whose careers ended with playoff droughts

Sidney Crosby is bumming me out these days.

Not because he’s playing poorly. Quite the opposite – even at 37, he’s still scoring and playing a strong two-way game. No, the sad part is that it’s not anywhere near enough for the Penguins. With a sub-.500 record in a surprisingly tough division, their seasons already looks like a lost cause.

If so, it will be third straight year that Crosby misses the playoffs. And with two more years left on his extension, and little in the way of optimism that the aging Penguins can get any better, getting to five straight doesn’t seem unrealistic. Assuming he doesn’t push for a trade, it’s legitimately possible that we’ve already seen the last of Sidney Crosby in NHL games that actually matter.

Maybe things will turn around in Pittsburgh. But if not, Crosby could at least take some solace in knowing that he won’t be the only legend to end his career with little or no playoff action. It happens more than you might think, especially when we’re talking about players who are still performing at a high level. You’d think the hockey gods would make sure that every star got the sendoff they deserve. But for every Ray Bourque or Lanny McDonald or Mark Recchi who goes out on top, or even an Adam Oates who at least comes close, there are stars who never get that chance.

Let’s remember a few of those guys today, if only to make Sid feel better. OK, fine, to make me feel better about where Crosby might be headed.

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Penguins vs. Oilers: Which team holds all-time bragging rights?

The Edmonton Oilers have a chance to make history this week, as they’ll look to stretch a win streak that currently stands at 16 games. They’ll try to get to 17 tonight in Vegas and then 18 on Friday in Anaheim, which would break the all-time NHL record currently held by the 1992-93 Penguins.

In a way, that feels fitting. The Penguins and Oilers have felt like two teams connected for the better part of four decades. Wayne Gretzky gave way to Mario Lemieux as the league’s best player, around the same time that the Oilers dynasty was stepping aside for the Penguins. A generation later, it was Sidney Crosby passing the torch to Connor McDavid. And along the way, we’ve been able to debate Mark Messier vs. Jaromir Jagr, and Leon Draisaitl vs. Evgeni Malkin, and Paul Coffey vs., uh, Paul Coffey.

OK, great. So which team is better?

I don’t mean right now. I mean which team wins the all-time battle? The Penguins joined the league in 1967 and the Oilers arrived in 1979, and they’ve each won five Stanley Cups, tied for the most since they’ve both been in the league. They’ve both had legendary players. They both have devoted fan bases, and also plenty of other fans who can’t stand them.

Oilers vs. Penguins. Who you got?

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Ray Bourque’s Stanley Cup win was bad, actually: It’s the return of The Contrarian

It’s Friday, and it’s a good time to have some fun. Except it isn’t. Unless it is. Which it isn’t. But really, you moron, it clearly is.

Yes, it’s time for another round of The Contrarian, the feature where you send me your most obviously correct hockey takes, and I tell you that you’re wrong. We tried this back in October, when you forced me to make the case that Mark Messier was a great Canuck, the puck-over-glass penalty works, and Kerry Fraser wasn’t to blame for missing that high stick in 1993. And I succeeded, because I’m a sportswriter, and our most important skill is to make loud and convincing cases arguments for things we don’t actually believe.

If you have a statement you’d like to submit for a future edition of The Contrarian, you can do that here. But fair warning, the bar has been set high, as you’re about to see. Or not see. As always, feel free to try to figure out which of these I actually believe.

The Stanley Cup handoff to Ray Bourque was a great moment in hockey. – Adam S.

On the contrary, Adam, you blockhead.

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30 years ago, the NHL delivered the greatest single night in playoff history

If I asked you to come up with the perfect night of NHL playoff hockey, what criteria would you go by?

Maybe you’d start with star power. In that case, you’d probably want to see that year’s MVP, or the Vezina winner, or the Norris winner, and hell why not also the Norris runner-up. Maybe you’d rather just have arguably the most skilled player of all time, or the player he’d soon pass the torch too. Or you might want to see a superstar pull off something that nobody had ever done before. If you were especially greedy, maybe you’d insist on all of those guys.

Or maybe you’d skip the individual names and go for team-based storylines. You could start with a team in collapse, or an underdog chasing their first series win in forever, or a favorite facing down a decade-long drought, or one that was barely hanging on as a franchise and needed a win to survive. Maybe you’d want a long-running rivalry that had produced a constant string of playoff matchups, or a brand new one that never had before. You’d probably want the Presidents’ Trophy winners in there, and maybe the runners-up too. You’d definitely want the defending Stanley Cup champions to be involved, and also the next winner. Hell, why not the next four. You’d want drama, and overtime, and bad blood, and high stakes.

Or maybe you’d skip all of that and just insist on two words: Game 7. The best two words in playoff hockey, because it means a true winner-take-all showdown. One team survives and moves on to chase a championship, and one goes home with their hearts broken. A Game 7 is the best. Or maybe more than one.

Could I interest you in all of the above?

Good. Let’s look back on the single greatest night in the history of the NHL playoffs. Let’s head back almost exactly 30 years, to May 1, 1992, and let’s savor the chaos of something we’d never seen before, have never seen since, and probably never will again: Four separate Game 7 showdowns all happening at the same time.

Eight teams, eight stories

The 1992 playoffs almost hadn’t happened, with a player strike on April 1 marking the first work stoppage in NHL history and threatening to scrap the season. The strike lasted ten days, pushing the playoffs back (and setting the stage for decades of lockouts to come), and the postseason officially began on April 18.

Back then, the NHL defaulted to scheduling each conference on alternating days – no weird gaps, no random back-to-backs, just the knowledge that your team would play every second night for as long as they could last. The Campbell went first in 1992, and served up four very good series. Two of those went six games, and two more went the full seven, with those two deciding games being played on April 30; the Canucks beat the Jets and the Wings outlasted the Stars. Not a bad night of hockey.

But the next night was the main event, because the Wales conference saw all four series go the distance. That meant four Game 7s on one night. And with the Wales being the forerunner to the Eastern Conference, all four of those games were in the same time zone. Eight teams, eight seasons on the line, four winner-take-all showdowns, and all of it happening at the same time. We’d never seen it before, and we’ve never seen it since. May 1, 1992 delivered something unique in the history of the league.

Penguins vs. Capitals. Sabres vs. Bruins. Whalers vs. Habs. And Rangers vs. Devils. It was about to get wild.

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The Athletic Hockey Show: Comeback kids

On this week's episode of The Athletic Hockey Show:
- Ian has an idea for a future column, and I am stealing it
- With the Tiger Woods comeback, we talk about some of the NHL's most miraculous injury recoveries
- Where the Sabres' 11 years without a playoff appearance ranks among all-time misery
- Jesse Granger on the Knights' big loss
- The current Calder odds, including a 20-1 longshot I like a lot
- Two bits of goalie trivia I didn't know in This Week in History
- Listener mail and more...

The Athletic Hockey Show runs most days of the week during the season, with Ian and I hosting every Thursday. There are two versions of each episode available:
- An ad-free version for subscribers that you can find here
- An ad-supported version you can get for free wherever you normally find your podcasts (like Apple or Spotify)

Puck Soup: Montreal mess

On this week's episode of the Puck Soup podcast:
- Big changes in Montreal
- Should more be on the way in Vancouver?
- We have a biting suspension
- Time to reset the "days since Brad Marchand did something dirty" sign
- The Penguins are sold
- Playoff bubble, holiday stuff, a quiz and lots more...

>> Stream it now:

>> Or, listen on The Athletic or subscribe on iTunes.

>> Get weekly mailbags and special bonus episodes by supporting Puck Soup on Patreon for $5.

The Athletic Hockey Show: When stars get benched

On this week's episode of The Athletic Hockey Show:
- Zach Parise becomes the latest star to get benched
- Was this the right time for Dean Evason to play it tough?
- We both agree on the worst benching of all-time
- The Habs fire a coach during a game; did Carey Price know?
- The timing of a potential Jack Eichel trade
- The Leafs are running away with the North
- This week in history, featuring the night that Teemu's record-breaker was only the second best highlight
- Listener questions and lots more...

The Athletic Hockey Show runs most days of the week during the season, with Ian and I hosting every Thursday. There are two versions of each episode available:
- An ad-free version for subscribers that you can find here
- An ad-supported version you can get for free wherever you normally find your podcasts (like Apple or Spotify)

What was the single biggest upgrade in every team’s history?

NHL franchises are constantly looking to improve, both on and off the ice. Whether it’s the first-line center, the starting goalie, the coach or GM, or even the owner, everyone has an important role to play. And the journey towards a Stanley Cup is a long, slow process of finding marginal improvements at every spot, hoping to get a little bit better with every change.

Sometimes. Other times, you can change everything by replacing one guy with somebody who’s just way better at their job.

That’s what we’re looking for today, as we ask a simple question: What’s the single biggest upgrade in franchise history for every NHL team?

First, let’s be clear about what we’re looking for. We don’t just want to find the most important person in a team’s history, because that’s only half of the equation. Who they replaced matters too because we’re looking at how big the gap was from old to new.

For example, I’m not sure anyone in NHL history has ever been as good at what they did as Montreal Canadiens GM Sam Pollock, but do you know who he replaced? Frank Selke, who held the job for nearly 20 years and won six Cups. That’s passing the torch from one legend to another, but it’s not a huge upgrade, so Pollock won’t be our pick in Montreal.

We’re also looking for cases where the upgrade is pretty much immediate. We’ll allow for a brief transition when it comes to owners or the occasional very short stint by an interim GM, but in general, we’re not interested in cases where there were several years or faces in between two names, or for situations where a new player took several years to evolve into a star. In fact, we won’t see many players on this list at all, because it’s rare to see a scenario where there’s a clear and immediate changing of the guard, especially for skaters. Connor McDavid is the best player in the world, but he was only third in team scoring in his first year in Edmonton. We want instant results, or at least something close. Out with the old, in with the new, and just like that everything changes.

You probably already have somebody in mind for your favorite team. Let’s see if I can land on the same name, as we work our way through the entire league.

Anaheim Ducks

We’re going alphabetically, but the Ducks are a good place to start since they’re not an especially easy call. I’m not sure any players fit, although maybe the arrival of Paul Kariya or Scott Niedermayer could work. They’ve typically had reasonably good coaches. They won a Cup with Brian Burke as GM, but predecessor Bryan Murray did a lot of the heavy lifting. Let’s look to the top, with the Samueli family taking over from Disney in 2005. Disney had been solid owners in the teams’ early years but had clearly lost interest in the franchise by the time the lockout rolled around, and relocation was even starting to seem possible. Instead, Henry Samueli arrived, signalling the franchise’s shift from walking advertisements for a movie series to a real hockey team.

The upgrade: Disney to the Samuelis, 2005 (owner)

Arizona Coyotes

As a player, there may have never been anyone better than Wayne Gretzky. As a coach … well, he was a heck of a player. He probably sold a few tickets in his four years behind the Coyotes’ bench, but he never got them into the playoffs and only barely cracked the .500 mark once. Replacing him with Dave Tippett led to an immediate 28-point jump, three straight years in the playoffs and the longest postseason run in franchise history.

The upgrade: Wayne Gretzky to Dave Tippett, 2009 (coach)

Boston Bruins

Our first Original Six team gives us nearly a century to work with, but we don’t need to overthink this one. Milt Schmidt did a decent job as GM for five years from 1967 to 1972, even winning two Cups. But he did that largely on the strength of Bobby Orr, Phil Esposito, Johnny Bucyk and Gerry Cheevers, all of whom were on board before he arrived. Then he gave way to Harry Sinden, who held the job for almost 30 years during which the Bruins were playoff mainstays and perennial Cup contenders.

The upgrade: Milt Schmidt to Harry Sinden, 1972 (GM)

Buffalo Sabres

The Sabres are a tough one. Dominik Hasek wasn’t much when he first arrived, and when he did blossom into a superstar he took over from another Hall-of-Famer in Grant Fuhr. Gilbert Perrault was there from Day 1. Lindy Ruff replaced a reigning Jack Adams winner. And while we’d probably have said the Pegulas a few years ago, that wouldn’t hold up as well today. I’m going to reach back to 1979, as the Sabres lure Scotty Bowman away from the Habs. He only lasted one year as coach, which was always the plan, but stayed for seven seasons as GM. He didn’t deliver a Cup or even much in the way of contending after the first few years, but the hire gave the decade-old franchise a huge dose of credibility (and helped short circuit a rival’s dynasty).

The upgrade: John Anderson to Scotty Bowman, 1979 (GM)

Calgary Flames

I don’t think the Jarome Iginla deal works; he wasn’t really replacing Joe Nieuwendyk and didn’t even debut in Calgary until months after the trade. Mike Vernon nudging out Reggie Lemelin? Maybe, but that was a gradual process. Most of the key parts of that 1989 Cup win were draft picks who were eased in. So I’m going to go with a different goaltending pick, one which didn’t result in a Cup but probably should have: landing Miikka Kiprusoff from San Jose, then watching him take over from Roman Turek a month into the season.

The upgrade: Roman Turek to Miikka Kiprusoff, 2003 (starting goaltender)

Carolina Hurricanes

Another tricky one – I’m still not sold on the Tom Dundon era – but we did say we were looking at franchise history, so the Whalers are in play. Let’s go with a pick that spans the Hartford and Carolina years, with the hiring of Jim Rutherford in 1994 to end Paul Holmgren’s brief and rocky stint as GM.

The upgrade: Paul Holmgren to Jim Rutherford, 1994 (GM)

Chicago Blackhawks

This is the easiest call on the entire list. Rocky Wirtz hasn’t been a perfect owner, and it would be simplistic to pretend that he deserves all the credit for the Hawks’ return to relevance and (eventually) championships. But as far as upgrades go, they don’t come any bigger than the ownership transition that followed the death of Bill Wirtz.

The upgrade: Bill Wirtz to Rocky Wirtz, 2007 (owner)

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What’s the best roster you could make from modern NHL history, while only using players who never played together?

For today’s post, we’re going to work through a simple question suggested by a reader.

I know what you’re thinking. The last time we tried the whole “simple question from a reader” thing, it didn’t go especially well for my psychological health. I’m pleased to report that won’t be the case this time; this question was actually a lot of fun to work through. Thank you, Kris B. from the comments section. This didn’t ruin my whole week.

That’s partly because unlike last time, we’re not looking for one right answer. In fact, I’d be willing to bet that you might be able to come up with a better answer than I can. But that doesn’t mean the question is easy, because it’s not – it’s deceptively tricky and gets harder as you go.

Here it is: What’s the best roster you could make from modern NHL history, while only using players who never played together?

That’s it. Nice and easy. You’re probably already filling in spots in your head, right?

Before we dive in, let’s nail down a few quick ground rules:

• “Playing together” means they were on the same roster at the same time during a season or playoffs. This is NHL only – we don’t care about the minor leagues or the WHA or international play or All-Star games or old-timer rosters.
• Positions matter. We need four centers, four guys at each wing, six defensemen and two goalies. No forwards playing out of position. (We’ll use hockey-reference as the arbiter of who plays where.)
• Because the records of who played on which team can get a little dicey in the league’s early days, I’m only going to go back to the start of the Original Six era. Apologies to “Phantom” Joe Malone.

Makes sense? Then let’s get started. And we’ll start in the obvious place: With the best player the sport has ever had.

Our first pick can be literally anyone from NHL history, so let’s start with Wayne Gretzky.

Gretzky is the perfect starting point for this game, for two reasons. For one, every fan would agree that he’s either the best player ever or at least very close. If you get a blank canvas to build any roster you want, of course you’re going to start with Gretzky.

The second reason is that he illustrates the dilemma we’re dealing with here. Gretzky played with a ton of elite players, meaning we can start scratching a whole lot of big names of our list right away.

His Oilers days cost us Mark Messier, Jari Kurri and Paul Coffey, not to mention Grant Fuhr and Glenn Anderson. The trade to the Kings wipes out Luc Robitaille and Rob Blake, among others. The Rangers years mean we lose Brian Leetch and Pat LaFontaine. And his stint with the Blues, even though it only lasted a few weeks, ends up wiping out a surprising number of big names, including Brett Hull, Al MacInnis, Chris Pronger and even (by just a few days) Dale Hawerchuk.

Yikes. It’s enough to have us already doubting ourselves. Do we … do we leave Wayne Gretzky off our roster?

There’s a case that we should, since it’s not like we’re going to be hurting for offensive center options. The counterargument is that this is Wayne Freaking Gretzky. He’s the NHL’s all-time scoring leader by nearly 1,000 points. Of course he’s on the team. Don’t galaxy-brain this. Write him in as the No. 1 center and don’t look back.

That’s the camp I’m in, so Gretzky’s on the team. Still, we’re one name in and you can already see how this is going to get tricky.

We’ve still got lots of room to work with for our next few picks. We said Gretzky was probably the greatest player ever, but some fans would argue that. Luckily, we don’t have to pick and choose among the top candidates – none of them ever played together, meaning we can fit them all onto the roster. So welcome aboard Bobby Orr, Gordie Howe and Mario Lemieux.

Those are all easy calls, right? They do come at a cost – Howe means we can’t use an entire generation of Red Wings, including Terry Sawchuk, Ted Lindsay, Johnny Bucyk or Red Kelly. And his brief stint with the Whalers ends up being surprisingly costly, as we lose access to Bobby Hull and Dave Keon. Orr means we can’t use fellow Bruins stars like Phil Esposito or Brad Park, and his stint in Chicago costs us Phil’s brother Tony, as well as Stan Mikita, who was still a Hawk well into the late-70s. Still, I can’t imagine anyone objecting to paying the price to have Orr and Howe on the team.

And then there’s Mario. He ends up being the first addition from what will turn out to be an important subset of players for this game: Guys who only ever played for one team. As we’ll see, guys who move around a lot end up being harder to fit in. Lemieux still costs us, though, because those early-90s Penguins teams were stacked with Hall of Famers, so we’re going to lose access to Ron Francis, Larry Murphy and even Bryan Trottier. Not bad names, but we’re not losing sleep over them.

And yeah, we also lose out on Jaromir Jagr, and that hurts, especially since winger figures to be a tough spot to fill. But come on, this is Mario Lemieux. There’s no way we don’t have him on the team.

Or is there …

Problem #1: The Mario Conundrum

Here’s the thing about picking between Lemieux and Jagr: It’s an easy call. Jagr was great, but Lemieux was legendary. There might be five players in NHL history that you take over Jagr without even thinking about it, but Mario’s one of them.

But then you remember Lemieux’s comeback, and that it stretched all the way into playing a few games in the post-lockout season in 2005-06. And that means he was briefly teammates with Sidney Crosby.

Mario Lemieux … or Jaromir Jagr and Sidney Crosby?

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Which birthday produces the best starting six in NHL history?

Last summer, I wrote a post about which first names could produce the best starting six lineup in NHL history. The response from readers was immediate and overwhelming: OK, great, now do the same thing for birthdays.

Look, I know when I’m being mocked. And yes, rummaging through 366 days’ worth of player data just to build a few imaginary teams full of stars and also-rans who’ve never played together or met or (in some cases) been alive at the same time, all seems like a gigantic waste of several days. But gigantic wastes of days are kind of my beat, so I was tempted.

I initially held off for two reasons. The first is that I figured I wouldn’t have the time to even consider such a weird concept until the offseason. That offseason came early this year, and it might last a while, so every crazy idea is back on the table.

But the second reason felt like the deal-breaker: There wouldn’t be any suspense. We all knew which date was going to win. It wasn’t even worth digging into.

It’s obviously going to be Team Oct. 5.

That’s pretty much the greatest date in NHL superstar birthday history. Specifically, Oct. 5, 1965. That’s the day that two of the very best players in the sport’s history were both born, just a few hours and about 100 miles apart: Mario Lemieux and Patrick Roy.

It’s a great bit of NHL trivia that also kind of ruins this whole “best birthday” concept. You start with two guys who have plausible cases as the best to ever play their positions, and it’s over.

Or is it? When I finally got around to confirming my suspicion, I realized that the rest of Team Oct. 5 isn’t going to be quite as unbeatable as you might think. In fact, it ends up looking something like this …

Oct. 5

Forwards: Mario Lemieux, Roy Conacher, Dean Prentice

Defence: Fredrik Olausson, Bob Whitelaw

Goaltender: Patrick Roy

Conacher won an Art Ross and made the Hall of Fame, while Prentice was a decent winger who played forever. Olausson was fine, but Whitelaw is a name from the 1940s and he barely played.

It’s still a pretty intimidating group, if only because Lemieux and Roy alone would dominate most lineups. But it doesn’t seem invincible. With 365 more days to work with, there could be a challenger lurking out there somewhere.

Screw it, I don’t have anything better to do. Let’s make this happen.

As always, we start with a few quick ground rules:

• We want three forwards, two defencemen and a goalie. Beyond that, positions or handedness won’t matter.
• Let’s assume everyone is alive and healthy and you get the player at the peak of their powers.
• If you can’t fill out a full lineup, you’re out of the running. The goalies will trip a few teams up, but that’s life in the tough world of imaginary roster-building.

We’ve set the bar high with Team Oct. 5. We’ll run through this chronologically, so let’s see who wants to step up and challenge them for the crown.

(Birthday data comes from hockey-reference.com. And special thanks to the NHL front office denizen who helped with the research but wishes to remain anonymous because he doesn’t want people to know he talks to me.)

Jan. 3

Forwards: Bobby Hull, Rick MacLeish, Mike Walton

Defence: Ryan Ellis, Cory Cross

Goaltender: Jacques Cloutier

This date features some big names like Bourque and Lemieux, but unfortunately, that would be Ryan and Real. We do get the real Bobby Hull, and he has some decent support, but this team isn’t giving Mario and Patrick any real worries. It’s a decent proof-of-concept, the equivalent of a light warmup stretch, but that’s about it. We can do better a bit further into the month.

Jan. 18

Forwards: Mark Messier, Syl Apps, Brian Gionta

Defence: Alex Pietrangelo, Dean Kennedy

Goaltender: Jason LaBarbera

Man, this team was feeling at least mildly frisky right up until we got to the goaltender, with two Hall-of-Famers up front and an All-Star on the blueline.

Jan. 21

Forwards: Dany Heatley, Doug Weight, Ulf Dahlen

Defence: Ryan Suter, Moe Mantha

Goaltender: Jonathan Quick

We don’t have any surefire Hall-of-Famers here, but we do get four modern-day All-Stars as part of a solid six-man lineup. Quick has a Conn Smythe, Heatley had multiple 50-goal seasons and Suter is definitely not on a bad contract. That’s not awful, but we can probably do better.

While we’re still in January, let’s check in on an entry some of you are probably wondering about …

Jan. 26

Forwards: Wayne Gretzky, Frank Nighbor, Dale McCourt

Defence: Fred Barrett, Vic Lynn

Goaltender: Daniel Berthiaume

Yeah, that’s what we’d call a top-heavy lineup. The Great One is at least joined by a fellow Hall-of-Famer in Nighbor, and McCourt was a first overall pick, but that’s about all the support this date can offer. Gretzky vs. Lemieux makes for a great debate most of the time, but not when Mario has Roy in net and Wayne has to rely on The Bandit.

Feb. 7

Forwards: Steven Stamkos, Ryan O’Reilly, Peter Bondra

Defence: Aaron Ekblad, Lee Fogolin

Goaltender: David Aebischer

This team starts strong but fades as we go. Still, that’s a hell of a forward line. And our depth includes a WJC hero in John Slaney and a former first overall pick in Alexandre Daigle. It’s not a bad group, but let’s skip ahead a week and see if Valentine’s Day can warm our hearts …

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In which I attempt to answer a simple question about jersey numbers that almost breaks me

Every now and then, a reader will reach out to me with a question. Sometimes, I already know the answer. Often, I have no idea where I’d even start. But the best kind of questions are the ones that make me think: “Huh, I’m not sure, but I bet it would be fun to find out.”

I got one of those a little while ago from a reader named Bryce. It was nice and simple. Bryce wanted to know which NHL player had scored the most goals in a single season in which their total matched their jersey number.

That’s kind of a cool question. And it’s one that shouldn’t be all that hard to figure out. I couldn’t come up with an answer off the top of my head, but I knew how to find one: just crack open a list of the highest single-season goal totals and work backward.

So that’s what I did. It will be fun, right?

Let’s begin, the way all great journeys do, at the beginning. In this case, that meant a list of every NHL player to ever score 60 goals or more in a season. It’s not a long list, but it’s probably longer than you might think. There have been 39 seasons of 60+ goals in NHL history. Could we find our answer in that list? I wasn’t sure, but it was the right place to start.

Five of those 39 seasons belong to Wayne Gretzky, and we can obviously eliminate him; he wore No. 99 for his entire NHL career, and he never got that many goals in a season. He came reasonably close, topping out at 92 in 1981-82, which still stands as the all-time record and probably always will. But we’re not looking for close here, so Wayne’s not our man.

He does have an impact, though, because his iconic No. 99 encouraged a generation of stars that followed to wear distinctive high numbers of their own. That was a new thing, and it should make our search easier.

Here’s where we run into our first problem: A lot of history’s greatest offensive talents have worn high numbers, but they were too high. Gretzky’s the only player to ever crack the 90-goal plateau, which wipes out the chances of plenty of today’s 90-wearing stars, like Connor McDavid and Steven Stamkos. Eric Lindros and Patrick Kane have posted big goal-scoring years, but neither got anywhere close to the 88 they wore. Alexander Mogilny’s 76 goals in 1992-93 is tied for the fifth-most ever, but he had a long way to go since he was wearing No. 89. Sidney Crosby’s great, but he hasn’t come anywhere near 87.

Brett Hull did, scoring 86 in 1990-91 and hitting the rarified 70-goal mark on two other occasions. But he did that while wearing No. 16, which leads to our second problem: Star forwards who don’t wear really high numbers usually wear relatively low ones. It’s a tradition thing. So right off the bat, we know we can rule out low-numbered stars like Rocket Richard and Gordie Howe and Bobby Hull (all No. 9), Alexander Ovechkin and Cam Neely (No. 8), Guy Lafleur and Pavel Bure (No. 10). Mike Bossy, Teemu Selanne, Steve Yzerman, Luc Robitaille or Jari Kurri? Sorry. All wore good, solid, traditional numbers that are way too low for what we’re looking for.

There is one player who wore a number in the 70s and had a 70-goal season. But that’s Phil Esposito, and he scored 76 in 1970-71 while wearing No. 7; he didn’t switch to No. 77 until he was traded to the Rangers, so he’s one goal and five years away from being our answer.

After dropping down into the 60s, optimism kicks in because there are two legendary scorers who both wore numbers in this range – Mario Lemieux and Jaromir Jagr, with both showing up on the list of 60-goal scorers. But Jagr topped out at 62 goals in 1995-96, missing his iconic No. 68 by a half-dozen. And while Lemieux had two seasons of 69 goals, one of 70, and one of 85, he never landed on exactly 66. He goes down in history as the highest jersey number to be exceeded by his goal total, but our search for an exact match carries on.

The only other candidates left on our initial list are Lanny McDonald, Dennis Maruk, Steve Shutt and Reggie Leach, and they all came along before higher vanity numbers were a thing. So no, we won’t find our answer in the 60+ club after all. No worries, though – we’ll just have to open up the search to the 50-goal club. And as it turns out, that’s a very big club indeed. Dropping our cutoff down to 50 goals opens the floodgates enough to allow 157 new seasons onto our list, so surely we’ll find our answer here.

The good news is that our list now includes dozens of names that we haven’t seen yet. The bad news is that a glance at some of the guys who had seasons in the high 50s tells us that we’re going to immediately run into the same two problems as before. Marcel Dionne, Tim Kerr and Michel Goulet? Traditional numbers that are too low. Pierre Turgeon or Sergei Fedorov? Too high.

And then, the first sense of doubt creeps in: Wait, what kind of star forward wears a number in the 50s?

There sure aren’t many. Typically, if they hand you a number in the 50s in training camp, it’s because they don’t expect you to stick around long. If you do, you get yourself a real number as soon as possible. What kind of self-respecting sniper is going to wear No. 58?

Not many. But that’s OK because we only need one. And the 50-goal tier is where we start to see some names where I wasn’t sure what number they wore. Charlie Simmer? Craig Simpson? Blaine Stoughton? Rick Kehoe? Nope across the board. John Ogrodnick, Wayne Babych or Pierre Larouche? Negative. I held out some hope for No. 55 since the double-digit thing was in vogue after Gretzky, Lemieux and Lindros. But no such luck, as guys like Keith Primeau, Jason Blake and Eric Daze fall well short, and Mark Scheifele has yet to come close. Dave Andreychuk did wear No. 52, but only for one season in 2000-01 when his 50-goal days were well behind him. Same with Dany Heatley wearing No. 51 for the Ducks.

I had a brief flutter of optimism when I remembered Jonathan Cheechoo’s 56-goal season. Did Cheechoo wear No. 56? It seems like the sort of number he might wear, right? He’d never been an elite goal-scorer before that wild 2005-06 season, so maybe he was still wearing a scrub’s number when he broke through. Alas, he was not. He wore No. 14 that year. Not even close.

By the time I got into the low 50s – Rick Martin? Blaine Stoughton? Ray Freaking Sheppard? – desperation was beginning to set in. I felt like I may have made a terrible mistake.

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Grab Bag: Buildup to legendary Wings/Avs brawl, time for NHL to get creative

In the Friday Grab Bag:
- Should the NHL do anything for the teams that traded draft picks for rentals they'll never use?
- A debate about what the rest of the season should look like gets interrupted
- An obscure player with a Wrestlemania theme
- The week's three comedy stars
- And a YouTube look back at the pre-game coverage of the famous Wings/Avs brawl

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DGB weekend power rankings: A rerun from 1993

Editor’s note: The DGB Power Rankings would normally appear in this space today. However, due to the current shutdown, there is no NHL action to write about. So for this week’s rankings, we’ll do what our friends in the TV industry have been doing: Dip into the archives and air a rerun.

The following Weekend Rankings column originally ran exactly 27 years ago today, on March 23, 1993.

Let’s dive right in with the big news of the day: Yesterday’s trade deadline. As expected, it was a frantic day of wheeling and dealing, with a ton of action to sort through.

Nine trades, to be exact. Involving fourteen different players. Whew. Nine trades! Where do you even begin?

The Penguins loaded up for their run at a three-peat, adding defensemen Mike Ramsey and Peter Taglianetti. That’s not quite up there with the Ron Francis deal from two years ago, but it’s a pair of nice adds that cement the Pens as the favorites heading into the stretch run.

The Kings added veteran blueliner Mark Hardy from the Rangers, while the Caps and Jets pulled off a goalie-for-goalie swap involving Jim Hrivnak and Rick Tabaracci. Murray Craven went to the Canucks for Robert Kron. And Chicago added Craig Muni from Edmonton; the veteran will be going from a bottom-feeder to a Cup contender, and will no doubt be thrilled to report to the Hawks.

The big loser in all of this might be the Rangers, who whiffed in their well-publicized efforts to add a big-name defenseman. They did pick up Esa Tikkanen from Edmonton a few days ago, for the low cost of marginal prospect Doug Weight. And they’re still holding down third in the Patrick, so unless they collapse, they won’t become the first Presidents’ Trophy winner to miss the playoffs. It’s not all bad. But if they’re ever going to break their 53-year-and-counting Cup drought in New York, you’d think Neil Smith will have to learn how to get aggressive at the deadline.

Will any of those trades impact this week’s power rankings? Let’s find out …

Road to the Cup

The five teams that look like they’re headed towards a summer of respectfully celebrating a hard-earned victory in a quiet and dignified fashion.

Last night’s Canucks/Blues game was a real snoozer, eh? Just four goals total in a 3-1 Blues win, one that turned into a goaltending battle between Curtis Joseph and Kirk McLean. Here’s hoping they offered a partial refund to any fans who paid to see that dud. Luckily, these sorts of defensive struggles remain rare; there’s only been one other game all week that featured fewer than five goals, compared to an even dozen that featured eight or more.

Offense isn’t quite back up to 1980s levels, but it’s rebounded nicely after a two-year dip that saw league scoring drop all the way down to seven goals-per-game. With a league full of in-their-prime legends and young up-and-coming stars, good luck to any defensive-minded coaches out there looking to stem the coming tide of fan-friendly offense; they’ll no doubt have a devil of a time.

5. Washington Capitals (36-28-7, +24 true goals differential*) – They’ve cooled off since last month’s impressive seven-game win streak, but they remain well-positioned for home ice in the playoffs. Their path out of the division goes through Pittsburgh, which is a concern, but they’re pretty much the only Patrick team that has any chance of beating the Penguins. And besides, they’ve lost to the Pens in each of Pittsburgh’s two Cup-winning years. If I know the law of averages, there’s no way that keeps happening.

By the way, how about that Dale Hunter? Three points against the Sharks and he’s closing in on the team scoring lead. Don’t turn your back on this guy, he’s showing no signs of slowing down.

4. Boston Bruins (41-25-7, +38) – They remain one of the most consistent teams in the league, with last night’s comeback win over the Whalers meaning they still haven’t lost consecutive games since early January. While they haven’t caught the Habs for top spot in the Adams yet, that feels all but inevitable right now. Will they have a long playoff run? Nothing’s ever guaranteed, but let’s just say I’m feeling pretty confident that May is going to be memorable.

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What's the fourth-best Canadian international hockey moment?

Last Friday was the 10th anniversary of Sidney Crosby’s golden goal, the overtime winner against the United States that delivered Olympic gold in front of a delirious Vancouver crowd.

It was a remarkable goal that still holds up as a “where were you” moment to this day, and the anniversary spurred a rush of pride and patriotism among Canadian hockey fans. But it also prompted something else, something far more rare and wonderful: a good tweet.

Specifically, a tweet by user @thupka1982 asking a seemingly simple question: What’s the Mount Rushmore of Team Canada goals? In other words, which four stand above the others as the best and/or most memorable in Canadian international hockey history?

I’m going to take the liberty of expanding the question to not just goals, but moments. The beauty of the question is that the first three are obvious. Just about everyone would give you the same list: Crosby’s Golden Goal, Paul Henderson’s winner in 1972 and Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux teaming up to beat the Soviets in 1987. You can’t get hockey fans to agree on anything, but I can’t imagine anyone who wouldn’t have those three moments on their list.

But what’s No. 4? That’s where it gets interesting. Today, with permission from our pal @thupka1982, let’s break down some of the candidates.

Darryl Sittler’s fake shot

The game: The inaugural Canada Cup in 1976 was meant to expand on the success of the 1972 Summit Series, with the expectation that we’d get a rematch between Team Canada and the Soviets. Instead, Canada ended up facing an underdog Czechoslovakian team in the final.

The moment: Canada won the first game of the best-of-three in a 6-0 blowout. But they had a tougher time in Game 2, needing a late goal to send the game to overtime. That’s when this happened:

Why it’s in the running: It was the first great international moment to happen in sudden death, and it’s an absolute beauty of a goal. (Side note: Don Cherry has tried to claim the credit for the move, which may or may not factor into where you rank it.)

The case against: Not having it come against the Soviets hurts the case a bit, as does the fact that it wasn’t a must-win game for Canada.

Bottom line: It’s definitely in the conversation, although I’m not sure there’s room on our Mount Rushmore for two games from the 1970s.

John Slaney plays the hero on home ice

The game: Heading into the 1991 World Junior Championship, Canada was the defending champs. But they’d never won back-to-back tournaments and had never won the tournament on home ice. They had a chance to make history on both fronts when they faced the Soviets in their final game of the tournament, with the winner taking gold.

The moment: Late in a 2-2 tie, a draw in the Soviet zone ended up with the puck sliding back to Canadian defenseman John Slaney, who had time to step into the shot of his life.

Why it’s in the running: It’s not the greatest goal on the list, although it might challenge for the best celebration. But this moment, along with the crowd reaction and TSN’s coverage of it all, may have been the one that elevated the world juniors from a vaguely important tournament to a Canadian institution.

The case against: In terms of big names to score a crucial goal, Slaney doesn’t exactly rank up there with Crosby or Lemieux or Sittler. Then again, when it comes to the world juniors, that might be part of the appeal.

Bottom line: It’s probably hard to explain to younger fans, but this one really was a huge moment back in the day and set the stage for other great WJC moments to come. Like this one …

Jordan Eberle’s buzzer-beater

The game: Canada and Russia renewed international hockey’s greatest rivalry at the 2009 world juniors in Ottawa. Canada had won four straight golds, but the Russians held a one-goal lead late in the game.

The moment: With the goalie pulled and Canada pressing in the final minute of the third, Ryan Ellis made a play at the blue line to keep the puck in the Russian zone. After an extended scrum along the sideboards, the puck squirted free to Jordan Eberle in front of the net.

Why it’s in the running: There may not be a goal in Canadian hockey history that came out of nowhere quite like this one. One second, the puck was by the boards as the game ticked away; the very next, Eberle was somehow all alone in front of the Russian net. The whole thing played out almost too quickly for a fan’s brain to process in real time, which made it one of the great “Did I actually just see that?” moments ever.

The case against: Memory is a funny thing. You know Canada went on to win the game, but do you even remember who scored the winner in overtime? Nobody did because the game was decided in a shootout, which is kind of lame. Another piece you may not remember, with shades of the Miracle on Ice: This wasn’t the gold medal game. It was the semifinal.

Bottom line: The fact that a goal that didn’t end a game or a tournament is still remembered to this day just drives home how insane the moment was for those that watched it live.

Hockey nicknames are broken. Here’s how we fix them

The NHL has a rich history of cool nicknames. Classic monikers like The China Wall, Old Poison or the Golden Jet evoke memories of larger than life stars, while memories of legendary moments can be summoned just by mentioning The Rocket, Mr. Hockey, Boom-Boom or, simply, The Great One.

But with a small handful of exceptions, all the sport’s best nicknames are from long ago. These days, star players get half-hearted variations of their last names, if they get anything at all. Nicknames used to matter in hockey, but not anymore. The entire concept is broken.

But we can fix this. And all it will take is five steps. Here’s what we need to do:

Step one: Stop accepting what we have now

Ask around an NHL dressing room over the past few decades and you’ll find out that most players are just referred to by modified versions of their last name. Usually, you just take the first syllable or two of their surname, maybe slap on an “er” or a “y” to the end, and you’re done. Sometimes you don’t even do that much. Jonesy. Kaner. Gio. Alfie. Iggy. Ovi.

Everyone agrees that these are terrible sports nicknames. But everyone is wrong.

No, those aren’t bad sports nicknames, because they’re not sports nicknames at all. They’re abbreviations. If you want to get technical, you could call them diminutive hypocorisms. Terms of affection between friends, in some cases. They’re nicknames, I guess, if only in the broadest possible sense.

But they’re not sports nicknames. Sports nicknames are a special class. They’re supposed to be descriptive, or at least creative. Fun, even. Vaguely interesting, at a bare minimum. (An academic paper by Robert Kennedy and Tania Zamuner calls these kinds of nicknames “Homeric,” which I kind of love because it’s a reference to the poet Homer but also captures that homer sports fan vibe).

The key point is that most modern hockey nicknames aren’t good nicknames because they’re not real nicknames at all. If your last name is Jones and people call you Jonesy, you don’t have a nickname. Yet. But maybe you should.

But first, we have to do something very important …

Step two: Stop asking the players what their nicknames are

Sure, players are terrible at assigning nicknames, at least publicly. Therefore, the whole problem is their fault, right? No. Not at all.

It’s not their fault. It’s ours.

All of us. The media. The fans. We’re the ones who are supposed to be coming up with nicknames. That’s supposed to be our job. But at some point along the way, we all decided to offload it onto the players. And again, they’re terrible at it.

The problem was buried right there in the first sentence of step one. “Ask around an NHL dressing room.” Why are we doing that? Who cares what the players call each other? That’s not where great nicknames come from.

Do you think Georges Vezina’s teammates were calling him “The Chicoutimi Cucumber” when they played cards on the train? Of course not. They probably called him Vezzy. But we don’t know that, because nobody ever asked them, and rightly so. Some old-timey sportswriter came up with The Chicoutimi Cucumber, everyone else went “that’s awesome” and a nickname was born. Vezina himself didn’t get a say. That’s how it’s supposed to work.

Back then, you had to rely on a handful of anointed media to come up with creative names, which worked well enough because most of the good ones were drunk at all times. Later, as cable TV and sports talk radio spread, you might occasionally get something generated by fans that was able to break through the filters. But today, in the age of social media, literally anyone can send a thought out into the world and see it gain traction. And sports nicknames are exactly the sort of fun-but-meaningless content that should be thriving on Twitter. We should be living in a golden age of nicknames.

But we’re not. And it’s because literally, nothing good has ever come from Twitter we all got lazy and just decided to ask the players to do it. Shame on us. It’s not their job, it’s ours. Let’s take it back.

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Grab Bag: Not another replay review

In the Friday Grab Bag:
- Oh god we have to talk about expanded replay again don't we?
- The best way to react to a waved-off goal
- The week's three comedy stars introduce a new culinary term
- An obscure player who committed mid-game murder
- And a look back at the immediate aftermath of the craziest brawl in NHL history

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Everything I needed to know in life I learned from watching Bob Cole call hockey games

The​ NHL regular season​ comes​ to​ an​ end​ on​ Saturday with​ a full slate of​ games highlighted by​ a marquee​ Canadian matchup between​​ the Maple Leafs and Canadiens. The game could decide the East’s final playoff spot, or it may not matter at all as far as the standings go. But either way, the broadcast will be must-see viewing for plenty of hockey fans across the country and beyond, because it’s going to be the last game of Bob Cole’s legendary play-by-play career.

We’ve known this night was coming for years, as Hockey Night in Canada gradually pared back Cole’s schedule. This season has turned into a farewell tour of sorts, with tributes and standing ovations in buildings around the league. Hockey fans have certainly had time to prepare for the moment. Just not enough.

For many of us, an NHL without Bob Cole is almost unimaginable. After a half-century in the booth, most of today’s fans have literally never known a hockey world in which Cole wasn’t calling games. Pick a hockey moment from your life that made you jump out of your seat, or stare in disbelief, or even want to put a fist through your TV screen, and chances are Cole was the voice that went along with it.

Like a lot of you, I grew up with Bob Cole. My kids have too. But rather than get weepy over a moment we all knew would arrive someday, I’d rather celebrate the 50 years that led us to this point. Because Cole hasn’t just entertained me over the years – he’s taught me a few things along the way. So here are 10 important life lessons I’ve learned from watching a legend.

Lesson No. 1: It’s OK to show some enthusiasm…

Let’s start with the best thing about listening to Bob Cole: He really, really seemed to like hockey.

That seems like a weird thing to say about somebody who makes their living televising a sport. But these days, even the best broadcasts are often brought down by a parade of dour voices who don’t seem to like anything or anyone involved. There are plenty of valid reason to criticize this league and its teams, and nobody tunes in to see a pep rally, but there’s only so many grumpy faces you can handle in one show, you know?

I think that’s a big part of what we loved about Bob Cole. He’d get loud, and sometimes very loud. But he never sounded like he was putting on an act, or forcing out some scripted line he’d rehearsed in front of the mirror. He just seemed like a guy who genuinely liked hockey, and when his volume went up it was because the moment deserved it.

Lesson No. 2: … but never fake it

The other side of the hockey TV coin are the guys who try a little too hard. They’re all fake passion and over-the-top enthusiasm, to the point where you’re wondering why they’re yelling at you when it’s only pregame warmup. And while I love Mike Lange and Rick Jeanneret as much as anyone else, if you’re not one of those two guys then you probably don’t need to try to do the whole clever catchphrase thing.

Cole never really had a catchphrase. I suppose you could make a case for something like “Oh baby” but that was more of a genuine exclamation of excitement than something manufactured. You never felt like Cole was sitting there in the booth with a note to remind himself to say it a few times a night because it was his trademark and he had to get it out there.

No, when you heard an “Oh baby” from Bob Cole you knew it was because he’d just seen something cool and wanted to make sure you knew about it.

Lesson No. 3: The world is changing

I can’t find a clip, but I know a few of you will back me up on this. Back in the late ’90s the NHL started experimenting with its All-Star game, and at one point it decided to go with an international-themed format that would see players from Canada and the U.S. facing a team made up of everyone else. They called it North America vs. The World.

The format wasn’t all that good and didn’t last long, but it left two lasting legacies. The first is a bunch of really weird All-Star picks like Petr Buzek and Marcus Ragnarsson. And the second, and far more important, is the time that Cole punctuated an otherwise ordinary line change by dramatically announcing that “THE WORLD IS CHANGING.” It might be my favorite random Cole moment ever. Yes, even better than the immortal “everything is happening” although it goes without saying that was also amazing.

The world was, indeed, changing, and has been ever since. And anytime anyone makes that observation, I can’t help but hear it in Bob Cole’s voice.

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Friday Grab Bag: An important word about the 2020 lockout (plus 50% off The Athletic)

In the Grab Bag:
- Gary Bettman says he doesn't want a lockout this time. Should we believe him?
- None of the Americans are around this week so lets talk trash about their hockey teams
- An obscure player with a long name and short career
- The week's three comedy stars include an insane mascot and a crotch grab
- And a look back at the poor reporter who had to pretend that the 1985 Calder Trophy race was a tough call

And today, you can get the Grab Bag plus everything else on The Athletic for a pretty ridiculous price. They're running a one-day Black Friday sale that gets you everything on the site for just $2.49 USD or $2.99 CAD per month, and you get a free t-shirt. It's the best offer of the year, so if you've been on the fence today's a good day to make the jump. You'll find the offer at the bottom of today's post.

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Grab Bag: Disco Lafleurno

In the return of the Friday Grab Bag:
- The NHL refuses to use its own cap recapture rule. Good, because it's terrible.
- I have a solution for the NHL's Fortnite problem
- An obscure NHL bust you've seen a million times without knowing it
- The week's three comedy stars
- And a look back at a time when Montreal stars were the coolest guys in the world

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When teams trade away top-five picks

The​ Ottawa Senators are coming​ off​ one​ of​ the​ worst​ stretches in​ recent pro sports​ memory, including an​ offseason​ that brought one​​ negative story after another. At this point, you’d like to think that they’ve hit rock bottom. But that might not be true, because there’s a nightmare scenario looming.

It goes something like this: The Senators have the kind of season everyone seems to think they will, finishing at or near the bottom of the league. That earns them one of the top picks in the Jack Hughes draft. But they’ve already traded that pick to Colorado in last year’s Matt Duchene deal, so they get to cap off their season by watching the Avalanche draft a potential franchise player instead.

It would be an undeniably awful way to end a miserable season, and it makes a rebuild a much tougher sell to an exhausted fan base. After all, how do you squeeze any optimism out of a losing season if you don’t even have your own first-round pick to look forward to?

If it’s any comfort, the situation the Senators could be facing isn’t unheard of in recent NHL history, although it is relatively rare. In the last 35 years, eight teams have traded away a future first-round pick, only to suffer through a season that placed that choice in the top five of the draft. (To be clear, we’re not counting teams that traded away a pick they already knew would be a top-five; no trade deadline moves or draft floor wheeling and dealing here. We’re looking for teams that traded their pick in the previous calendar year or earlier, meaning that like Ottawa, they didn’t know their pick would be so high when they moved it.)

The Senators will be hoping not to expand that club to nine. But if they do, a look back at those previous cases might give us a sense of what to expect.

A word about arbitrary endpoints

But first: Wait, why are we going back 35 years?

It’s admittedly a bit of a weird place for a cutoff. But when it comes to teams trading away top five picks, there’s actually an interesting reason to draw the line right around 1983.

In the 35 years since, the scenario plays out just those eight times (one of which probably shouldn’t even count, as we’ll see). But from 1980 through 1983, it happened ten times in just four years. That’s kind of crazy, and the list includes the picks used on future Hall of Famers like Denis Savard, Larry Murphy and Pat LaFontaine, not to mention three out of four first overall picks.

What happened? That’s probably a topic for a bigger piece, but we can call it the Sam Pollock influence. Pollock, the legendary Canadiens GM who built the last great Habs dynasty in the 70s, was constantly trading veterans for future draft picks that he turned into stars like Guy Lafleur and Larry Robinson. It was his signature move, and it worked so well that you wondered why other GMs weren’t catching on. They eventually did, and you can pretty much divide the history of trading for future draft picks into three distinct eras: The Pollock era, spanning the late 60s to late 70s, in which he was the undisputed king of the move; 1980 through 1983, in which a few other GMs caught on and started pulling off that kind of deal; and 1984 through to today, in which everyone smartened up and realized that trading a future first-round pick is a dangerous move and the deals became an endangered species.

Endangered, but not extinct, as Senator fans are well aware. So today, let’s draw that line at 1983 and look back at the eight times since then that a team has traded away what turned out to be a top-five pick in advance. It’s a club that Ottawa’s front office is really hoping it isn’t about to join, although as we’ll see, sometimes the results are more disastrous than others.

Pierre Larouche (L). (Photo by Denis Brodeur/NHLI via Getty Images)

1984 – Montreal and Hartford

The circumstances: We have to go way back to December of 1981 for the actual trade here. Back then, the Habs and Whalers had only been division rivals for a few months. Hartford had failed to win a playoff game in two seasons since arriving in the WHA merger, and on December 20, they lost 8-2 to the Sabres to fall to 7-16-9 on the year, dead last in the division. New Whalers’ GM Larry Pleau figured they could use some help.

The trade: The Whalers and Canadiens hooked up on a Pollock-style trade that saw Pierre Larouche head to Hartford. Larouche had just turned 26, was a year removed from a 91-point season, and had 21 points through 22 games that season, so he was a decent pickup. He did fine in Hartford for a few years before leaving as a free agent.

But the rest of the deal was unusual, with the teams swapping a total of five picks – all of them coming in 1984 and 1985.

The pick: The two teams exchanged first-rounders in 1984, three years down the line. By then, the Canadiens weren’t very good, finishing with just 75 points. But the Whalers were even worse, and their pick ended up being fifth overall. The Canadiens used it to take defenceman Petr Svoboda.

The aftermath: Svoboda was a decent player. But the Whalers used Montreal’s pick to take Sylvain Cote, who was basically the same guy, so we can call this one even. If you’re a Senators fan looking for assurance that these deals can work out OK, this one helps.

That said, the deal could have been a history-altering debacle for Hartford. The top prospect in that 1984 draft was a French kid who turned out to be pretty good, and it’s safe to assume Montreal had him in mind when they made the deal way back in 1981. If the Whalers had been even worse than they were, this could have been the trade that put Mario Lemieux in Montreal.

1987 – Bruins and Canucks

The circumstances: By the 1986 offseason, the Canucks hadn’t won a playoff round since their surprise trip to the 1982 final, and were getting tired of being also-rans to Wayne Gretzky and the Oilers. So they decided to trade their 1987 first to the Bruins for somebody who could make an impact right away.

The trade: In June 1986, the Canucks landed two-time 100-point center Barry Pederson from Boston in exchange for their 1987 first rounder, plus a young winger who’d been kind of a disappointment through three seasons.

The pick: Thanks in parts to Pederson, the Canucks actually improved in 1986-87. But so did a few of the league’s other bottom-feeders, and Vancouver’s pick ended up being third overall. The Bruins used it to take defenseman Glen Wesley.

The aftermath: Wesley was a good player, and played in the 1989 all-star game. He’d spend seven years in Boston, many of them alongside Ray Bourque, and was eventually traded to Hartford for a stunning haul of three first-round picks, all of which ended up in the top ten.

Still, it could have been worse. The Canucks finished the season with three straight wins; take a few of those away, and the Bruins could have been using a top-two pick on Pierre Turgeon or Brendan Shanahan.

So even though Pederson didn’t stick around very long in Vancouver, trading away the pick to get him wasn’t a total disaster. Well, not on its own. As every Canuck and Bruin fan well knows, that disappointing young winger was a kid named Cam Neely. He exploded in Boston, quickly turning the Wesley pick into an afterthought and making this one of the worst trades of all time.

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