you know how people always talk how it was too bad for his confidence that jimmy carson had to play in the shadow of the gretzky trade?
i always wondered about joe murphy. he was a pretty successful player in his prime, but he was also easily the least memorable 1OA in a sort of unprecedented string of hits after the lawton bust. mario was the best player in the league, wendel clark was a folk hero, turgeon was scoring at superstar levels, sundin and nolan developed pretty quickly into all-stars, then lindros.
and not only was murphy slow to develop, he was traded for the 2OA in his own draft and his team had to add two very good pieces.
at the time of the trade, you have joe murphy who's never played a full year in the NHL and carson, a calendar year younger and he's coming off back-to-back 100 pt years. and 22 year old murphy wasn't even the clearcut best piece going the oilers' way. the troubled klima had averaged 30 goals over his four year career and broke gordie howe's team record for goals in a single playoff run.
flash forward to the mid-90s: murphy's settled into his prime as a 70–80 pt scorer but never took the next step expected of him after he held out for almost an entire year. meanwhile, klima had been a 40 goal scorer and graves hit 50. must have been a lot of pressure, and even without his play being about to plummet.
