The Hemsky trade was the least weird of the many acquisitions he made when we were far out of the playoffs, as at least we didn't have our 1st that year (thanks to the awful Ryan trade).
Adding Campoli and a rental Comrie in 2009 when we were bottom 5 was hilarious. Insane timing and it might have cost Murray dearly on draft day in not getting his guy Kadri.
Trying to improve the goalie position in 2011 by trading Tank Commander Elliott for Anderson ended up working out, but people need to factor in that doing the trade when he did ended up boosting the team in the standings from 2nd worst to 5th worst, probably costing us Landeskog/Huberdeau.
Did the same thing in 2016 with the Phaneuf trade too. Dude was completely incapable of sitting on his hands and letting the team suck when the season was already lost. Ended up sabotaging his own draft position a lot of the time because he couldn't stand to see the team lose.
I gotta disagree with a lot here. Murray sometimes would buy when the season was lost, but other moves were him actively trying to fill gaps in the roster and they worked more times than not. Getting us Anderson gave us stability in net, something we didn't have in a while.
Getting Phaneuf let us have a solid top 4, even if he should've gotten the Leafs to retain more.
Even the Ryan trade can only be called bad in hindsight. We gave up market value for someone who had hit 30g several times and was a legit top-line winger. If Ryan stayed as a 30g, 60 point winger, that trade doesn't look bad but nobody could've predicted him falling off the way he did.
