Ya the one thing about even the brutal Messier era was stuff happened.
Year one 97-98,
January 2, Canucks traded Gelinas and McLean to the Canes for Burke, Sanderson and Ciccone
Feb 4, Traded Sanderson for Brad May
Feb 6, the Canucks traded Trevor Linden for Bertuzzi, McCabe and a 3rd Round pick.
Mar 3. dumped Grant Ledyard to the Bruins for a late pick
March 4 traded Burke to the Flyers for Garth Snow
on and on 10 trades from Jan 1 to the deadline.
Year two 98-99,
Oct 19 brought in Trent Klatt from the Flyers for a 6th round pick
January 17 traded Bure, Ferece, Hedican, 3rd Round Pick to the Panthers for Jovanovski, Weekes, Gagner, Brown, 1st Round Pick
3 more minor trades that year before deadline...
At the draft they made numerous trades... long story short moving McCabe and a bunch of mid round picks to get 2nd overall. With 2nd and 3rd overall took the Sedins.
Into 99-00
Traded Mogilny to the Devils for Morrison
...............
Even with this flawed approach they came out from being a veteran team with some mid-age top end players (Bure and Mogilny) and had moved on to:
Naslund, Bertuzzi, Ohlund, Jovanovski, Morrison, the Sedins.
All this and somehow they had prospects coming up despite having a brutal farm team. These included Cooke, Ruutu, Sopel, Schaefer.