Building a roster of all-time Maple Leaf trade regrets

With a few days to go until the trade deadline, Kyle Dubas and the Maple Leafs still haven’t pulled off their big move. Or maybe they have, and Jack Campbell was it. But most of the fan base seems to be expecting something bigger, preferably a top-four defenseman. And while Dubas doesn’t have much in the way of picks to work with, he could surely work a blockbuster using guys off of the current roster, or from the prospect pipeline. Do it Kyle! Swing for the fences!

Just one thing: Do not under any circumstances trade away somebody we’re all going to regret losing.

That’s the tricky part of making trades. Fans love the short-term adrenaline rush of seeing a big deal cross the wire. But something has to go the other way, and that will often be a player or two or more. And sometimes, those players can turn out to be pretty good.

That’s where the regret comes in, along with that sense of disbelief that anyone ever thought it would be a good idea to give up that guy in the first place. It’s a feeling that Maple Leaf fans know well.

How well? How about well enough to fill out a full roster, which is what we’re going to do today. Just in case there were any Leaf fans out there with a little bit of hope and optimism still clinging to this rollercoaster of a season, let’s wring that right out with a full 20-man roster of guys that the Leafs probably wish they hadn’t traded away.

A few quick ground rules. First, we’re only worried about what the player did over the course of his career after being traded away by the Leafs. We’re looking at trades only, not guys lost to free agency or waivers or various drafts. And finally, we’re only considering players, not draft picks.

That last one is important because it removes a few names you might be expecting to see. Scott Niedermayer was never Maple Leafs’ property. Neither were Tyler Seguin or Roberto Luongo, or John Gibson or Roman Josi, or any number of good players who were drafted with picks that teams acquired from Toronto. The Leafs have certainly had a bad habit of trading high picks over the years, and it almost always works out great for the team on the other side. But trading a pick isn’t the same as trading a player, and you never know who your team might have taken if they’d stayed in that spot. While it costs us some star power, we’re going to stick to players who actually belonged to the Leafs.

The good news is that we still have plenty of candidates to choose from. And by good news, I mean let’s all hold hands and feel sad together. We’ll build this team the way all those Dubas critics insist on, from the net out …

Goaltenders

Bernie Parent

The trade: Parent bounced around a bit early in his career, going from the Bruins to the Flyers to the Leafs before flirting with the WHA. That led to the Leafs sending his rights back to Philadelphia in 1973.

What he did once he left: Parent returned to the NHL for the 1973-74 season and immediately won the Vezina, Conn Smythe and Stanley Cup. Then he did it all again the next year. He was inducted into the Hall-of-Fame in 1984.

But it’s OK because the Leafs got: The 10th overall pick in the 1973 draft, which they used on Bob Neely. He played five NHL seasons and scored 36 career goals as a Leaf.

Tuukka Rask

The trade: Heading into the 2006 offseason, Maple Leafs GM John Ferguson Jr. found himself with two can’t miss goaltending prospects, but nobody to hold down the starting job at the NHL level. He kept Justin Pogge and sent Rask to the Bruins.

What he did once he left: Rask is in his 11th season in Boston, most of those as a starter. He’s won a Vezina, is closing in on the 300-win club and was part of a Cup winner in 2011.

But it’s OK because the Leafs got: Andrew Raycroft, in a straight-up deal. He lasted one season as the starter in Toronto, leading the league in goals against and then lost his job to Vesa Toskala. That may be the most depressing sentence I’ve ever written.

But remember, the Leafs also got to keep Pogge, who played (checks notes) seven NHL games. A lot of people forget that part.

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Grab Bag: Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's a bed sheet

In the Friday Grab Bag:
- A deeper look at that amazing NBC playoff portrait
- A word about postseason trolling
- An obscure player who knew how to start a playoff series
- The week's three comedy stars, featuring a victory lap from Mr. Lottery
- And a YouTube breakdown of the Leafs setting a playoff record exactly 40 years ago today, and celebrating it very weirdly...

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Ranking the 2018 OGWACs

With eight teams left in the NHL playoffs, it’s still too early to start worrying about potential final matchups or Conn Smythe favourites. But it’s not too soon to start thinking ahead to one of the league’s best annual stories: the Old Guy Without a Cup.

Rallying behind the Old Guy Without a Cup (a.k.a. the OGWAC) is one of hockey’s great playoff traditions. Ray Bourque is probably the greatest OGWAC of all-time, finally capturing his first Stanley Cup at the age of 40 in what would turn out to be the last game of his career. Lanny McDonald’s 1989 championship was another classic OGWAC story, as was Teemu Selanne’s in 2007.

Last year it was Ron Hainsey, making his playoff debut as a 36-year-old. Like many OGWACs, Hainsey also received the honour of the first Cup handoff. There’s a good chance that this year’s playoffs end with a similar scene, since there are potential Old Guy stories lurking on almost every team left standing. But which one is the best?

Let’s define an “old guy” as someone who’s at least 35 or has been in the league for the entire salary-cap era. We’re also looking for players with a chance to actually be in the lineup for that Cup handoff, so we want guys who have either played in this year’s post-season or are likely to suit up soon.

That narrows our field a bit, but we’ve still got a decent group to choose from in this year’s OGWAC crop. Here are the 10 best remaining candidates, counting down to the best possible story.

No. 10: Paul Martin and Joel Ward, San Jose Sharks

We’ll call this one a tie so we can squeeze both Sharks into our top 10. Maybe that’s a little cheap, but both guys deserve a spot so here we are.

Ward didn’t become a full-time NHLer until he was 27, so even though he’s only been in the league for a decade he’s older than you probably think at 37. He’s had a few second-round exits over the years, and was part of the Sharks’ run to the final in 2016, so he’s had a taste. And his contract is up this year, meaning there’s no guarantee he gets another chance.

Meanwhile, Martin shows up on this list every year, and every year I have to double-check that he actually belongs here. Didn’t he win at least one Cup with the Devils or Penguins somewhere along the way?

Nope, although he just missed a few times — he debuted in New Jersey a season after their 2003 Cup win, then arrived a year after Pittsburgh’s 2009 title and left a year before they won again in 2016. To make matters worse, he had a front row seat to that last one, since it came against the Sharks.

Maybe he’s due. We also can’t rule out the possibility that he may be cursed.

No. 9: Scott Hartnell, Nashville Predators

Hartnell’s 36 years old and has been in the league since 2000, so he certainly fits the OGWAC profile. He’s also had a near-miss, coming within two wins of a Cup with the 2010 Flyers, and he’s another guy whose contract is expiring after this season, so this might well be his very last shot.

All that said, two things keep Hartnell from ranking higher on our list. First, the Predators are among this year’s deepest OGWAC teams, with two more strong candidates to consider. And Hartnell isn’t playing much so far in this year’s playoffs, appearing in just a single game so far, so there’s a good chance he wouldn’t even be in the lineup for a Predators’ Cup win.

No. 8: Braydon Coburn, Tampa Bay Lightning

Coburn barely sneaks onto our list by virtue of having played a few games during the 2005-06 season. But the Lightning are young enough that they don’t offer us much in the way of candidates – Dan Girardi and Ryan Callahan are both older than Coburn but didn’t enter the NHL until a year later, and our only other option is third-string goalie Peter Budaj.

So we’ll let Coburn represent Tampa. He’s a decent choice, with 120 career playoffs games on his resumé, including two unsuccessful trips to the Cup final. He’s a little young to rank much higher than this, but he’s worth rooting for.

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Grab Bag: WJC pathos edition

In the Friday Grab Bag:
- Why it's perfectly OK to criticize WJC players even though they're just kids
- Does the Blue Jackets' shootout-aided win streak really count?
- The Blues ridiculous alumni roster leads to this week's obscure player pick
- The week's three comedy stars
- And a YouTube breakdown of Don Cherry trying really, really hard not to murder anyone in the immediate aftermath of the 1987 Piestany brawl

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Pick your cap: What if hockey's hall of fame worked like Cooperstown

The Hockey Hall of Fame officially welcomed six new members Monday night at the annual induction ceremony in Toronto. As per tradition, there were speeches, highlights, and the unveiling of each member’s plaque.

What there was not was any kind of formal emphasis on specific teams. That’s because, unlike baseball’s Hall of Fame, the hockey version doesn’t associate each new member with one team. Cooperstown inducts each player wearing a cap of the team he’s most associated with, which can lead to plenty of debate.

Hockey doesn’t do that. But what if we did?

It wouldn’t be an especially tough question for this year’s four player inductees; Dominik Hasek would go in as a Sabre, Peter Forsberg as an Av, Rob Blake as a King, and Mike Modano as a Star. But other years, it wouldn’t have been such an easy call. Some of hockey’s greatest stars split their prime years between two or more teams, and choosing just one franchise to induct a player under would lead to all sorts of arguments, hyperbole, and hurt feelings.

That sounds like fun, so let’s give it a try. Let’s reimagine the Hockey Hall of Fame under Cooperstown rules: Each player has to go in as a representative of one team, and one team only.

First, let’s get a few of the easier ones out of the way. Consider this a pregame stretch:

Brendan Shanahan: Red Wings

He played the majority of his 21-year career elsewhere, but the three Stanley Cups in Detroit make this one an easy call.

Doug Gilmour: Maple Leafs

He spent more time in Toronto than anywhere else and had his best seasons there; that’s enough to trump the Cup he won in Calgary.

Dino Ciccarelli: North Stars

He moved around a lot, but he scored three times as many goals with Minnesota as anywhere else.

Al MacInnis: Flames

A tougher call than I expected; he played 10 years in St. Louis and won his only Norris there. But his offensive totals (and Stanley Cup) from his 13 years in Calgary tip the scales.

Paul Coffey: Oilers

Played just seven of his 21 seasons in Edmonton, but they were his best.

Pat LaFontaine: Islanders

A tougher call than you’d think, since his crazy 1992-93 in Buffalo was his signature season. But injuries just limited his games played as a Sabre too much.

Wayne Gretzky: Oilers

Come on.

♦♦♦

Now that we’re all warmed up, let’s move on to some tougher cases. Here are eight Hockey Hall of Famers who’d be tougher to nail down.

Patrick Roy: Canadiens or Avalanche?

Roy played 10 full seasons in Montreal to just seven in Colorado, with one season split between the two. But in terms of games played, it’s much closer, at just a 53 percent–to–47 percent edge for the Canadiens. And that’s for the regular season; in the playoffs, Roy actually played 133 games in Colorado to 114 in Montreal.

He split his four Stanley Cups between the two teams. Roy’s numbers in Colorado were significantly better than in Montreal, with his six best seasons in terms of GAA all coming as an Av. But that’s a function of the high-flying ’80s and early ’90s versus the dead puck decade that followed; adjusted for era, his numbers with both teams largely even out.

Perhaps the best argument for the Avalanche is that those were the years that Roy seemed to go from “very good goaltender” to “all-time great” in the eyes of most fans. But that’s because it was the second half of his career, when he started passing milestones and breaking records. As good as he was in Colorado, he was objectively better in Montreal — he won all three of his Vezinas there, and was a postseason first- or second-team All-Star five times, compared to just once in Colorado.

The verdict: Roy goes into the Hall as a Hab, in a decision that wasn’t as close as I thought it would be. By the way, Roy himself was asked about this when he was inducted, and dodged the question.

Brad Park: Rangers or Bruins?

Park isn’t as well known to the current generation of fans as fellow ’70s blueliners like Bobby Orr or Denis Potvin. In fact, that’s a big part of his legacy — he was the runner-up for the Norris Trophy six times over nine seasons without ever winning, the first four to Orr and the last two to Potvin.

With the exception of two years with the Wings, he split his career between the Rangers and Bruins. And it was just about as even a split as you could imagine. He played seven full seasons with each team, plus one year split between them. And his productivity with each team was eerily similar. Via Hockey-Reference.com, here were Park’s per-game averages with each team:

Yeah, I’d say that’s pretty close.

The verdict: The Rangers. They drafted and developed him, and he earned the majority of his All-Star selections (and Norris second-place finishes) in New York.

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