What is the single worst decision your team ever made?

[LGBlues]

I don't think anything will ever compare to the absurdity of the Oilers trading away Wayne Gretzky in his prime. Whatever the causes were, when you have a dominant, iconic player like that you do whatever needs to be done to keep him happy. The fact that Gretzky played more seasons outside of Edmonton than in Edmonton is criminal from the Oilers' perspective.



I disagree. The goal of all franchises is winning a Stanley Cup, that's the whole purpose of building a team. When you win a Stanley Cup, your GM can rest in peace knowing all moves leading to it were worth it. The problem is when you trade away assets and fall short, that's when regret kicks in.

I have a hard time seeing Tage as an essential demand of getting rid of locker room cancer O'Reilly.

 

[JadedLeaf]

Oilers:

He's even wearing oilers colours hahah

 

[RSPens]

It isn't the worst, but one of the ones that still sticks out to me since I've been old enough to be an adult fan was the Phaneuf trade. The fact we traded him in a time in the NHL when defensemen like him were still very effective and hadn't been rendered obsolete yet, for that package just for the sake of trading him still blows my mind. We didn't even get good depth up front from the deal. We got a solid bottom 6 centre out of the deal in Stajan and a bunch of spare parts for a top 3 defender in his prime.

But what did the Flames get for trading Iggy? Agostino (who?), Hanowski (who?) and Morgan Klimchuck (only know him because his uncle was my 2nd year Chem teacher and currently works for the same company). At least the average fan knew who Stajan was.

 

[KovalchukFistPump]

I can't comment too much on the 80's Devils since that was way before my time and I sort of write off that part of franchise history. But since someone mentioned the Devils letting go of Lou as the worst decision, I want to point out what the worst decisions I think are for Devils post 1988 history, and you'll see most of them were made during Lou's last 4 years. And they all come from what is #1:

1. Not giving up the 2012 1st rounder - this right here is an absolute firable offence that had a horrible spiral that led to the Devils turning out what is the worst case scenario of a team in the NHL: an old team that is fairly bad, but not bad enough to finish bottom-3. And for 2014, this was a bad team without a first-rounder. Some of the following are a direct result of it:

2. Trading the 9th for Cory Schneider - aka the anti-tank commander. This goes up the list purely because he was so good when we didn't need it (the McEichel and Matthews drafts) and then became terrible after his extension.
3. Drafting Pavel Zacha over pretty much anyone else in the 2015 draft
4. The moves made during the 2013-14 season trying to foolishly compete Signing Brunner, Ryder, Ryan Clowe, etc. Trading for Tuomo Ruutu. This is all because the Devils were going into that season with no 1st round pick due to #1. Funny enough, that team could have made the playoffs if they weren't epically bad in the shootout, but they would've been easy first round fodder.
5. Keeping David Conte (the scouting director) employed purely because of what he did in the 90's.

Other than that, I don't know. Not bringing back Nieuwendyk was a mistake for the 2003/04 team. But Lou was genuinely a genius for about 25 years. I'm actually pretty happy for him succeeding elsewhere, as it shows that he truly is a HoF talent GM. But yeah, those last few years with the Devils were rough.

 

[CamPopplestone]

But what did the Flames get for trading Iggy? Agostino (who?), Hanowski (who?) and Morgan Klimchuck (only know him because his uncle was my 2nd year Chem teacher and currently works for the same company). At least the average fan knew who Stajan was.

That's the risk trading a rental for futures. Iggy was nearing the end. It didn't work out, but a lot of those trades don't unfortunately.

 

[KapG]

The Kessel trade comes to mind as a leafs fan lol. That’s not saying he didn’t have some good years with us so don’t jump my nuts.

 

[Tripledeke333]

I guess you're right if we ignore the late 90's stuff.

And annoyingly enough we had MB emulate the same kinda trade with an even better viewed prospect (I think?)... losing Serg coulf haunt us similarly if we end up lacking a top tier LD

Yup! I 100% agree that the Drouin trade was the same kinda thing. We could have signed Radulov and gave up nothing, but MB had to trade Serg for Drouin to replace Radulov and Drouin was worse.

 

[abo9]

Yup! I 100% agree that the Drouin trade was the same kinda thing. We could have signed Radulov and gave up nothing, but MB had to trade Serg for Drouin to replace Radulov and Drouin was worse.

I give him a break bc at least Drouin was young and was showing potential... while Gomez was already old haha

 

[SladeWilson23]

Devils

Trading Claude Lemieux in 95

 

[Gil Gunderson]

There are way too many to choose from, but some have already been mentioned in this thread so I'll go with this.

 

[Rebels57]

Hiring Chuck Fletcher.

The Flyers are now staring down the barrel of a decade long rebuild thanks to his disastrous tenure.

 

[SladeWilson23]

I can't comment too much on the 80's Devils since that was way before my time and I sort of write off that part of franchise history. But since someone mentioned the Devils letting go of Lou as the worst decision, I want to point out what the worst decisions I think are for Devils post 1988 history, and you'll see most of them were made during Lou's last 4 years. And they all come from what is #1:

1. Not giving up the 2012 1st rounder - this right here is an absolute firable offence that had a horrible spiral that led to the Devils turning out what is the worst case scenario of a team in the NHL: an old team that is fairly bad, but not bad enough to finish bottom-3. And for 2014, this was a bad team without a first-rounder. Some of the following are a direct result of it:

2. Trading the 9th for Cory Schneider - aka the anti-tank commander. This goes up the list purely because he was so good when we didn't need it (the McEichel and Matthews drafts) and then became terrible after his extension.
3. Drafting Pavel Zacha over pretty much anyone else in the 2015 draft
4. The moves made during the 2013-14 season trying to foolishly compete Signing Brunner, Ryder, Ryan Clowe, etc. Trading for Tuomo Ruutu. This is all because the Devils were going into that season with no 1st round pick due to #1. Funny enough, that team could have made the playoffs if they weren't epically bad in the shootout, but they would've been easy first round fodder.
5. Keeping David Conte (the scouting director) employed purely because of what he did in the 90's.

Other than that, I don't know. Not bringing back Nieuwendyk was a mistake for the 2003/04 team. But Lou was genuinely a genius for about 25 years. I'm actually pretty happy for him succeeding elsewhere, as it shows that he truly is a HoF talent GM. But yeah, those last few years with the Devils were rough.

Letting Rafalski walk in 2007 was probably worse than Nieuwendyk.

I'd argue trading away Claude Lemieux in 95 and also not re-signing him after 2000 were his biggest mistakes in regards to players slipping away. Imagine having Claude in 2001 against the Avs.

 

[HugeInTheShire]

I can't comment too much on the 80's Devils since that was way before my time and I sort of write off that part of franchise history. But since someone mentioned the Devils letting go of Lou as the worst decision, I want to point out what the worst decisions I think are for Devils post 1988 history, and you'll see most of them were made during Lou's last 4 years. And they all come from what is #1:

1. Not giving up the 2012 1st rounder - this right here is an absolute firable offence that had a horrible spiral that led to the Devils turning out what is the worst case scenario of a team in the NHL: an old team that is fairly bad, but not bad enough to finish bottom-3. And for 2014, this was a bad team without a first-rounder. Some of the following are a direct result of it:

2. Trading the 9th for Cory Schneider - aka the anti-tank commander. This goes up the list purely because he was so good when we didn't need it (the McEichel and Matthews drafts) and then became terrible after his extension.
3. Drafting Pavel Zacha over pretty much anyone else in the 2015 draft
4. The moves made during the 2013-14 season trying to foolishly compete Signing Brunner, Ryder, Ryan Clowe, etc. Trading for Tuomo Ruutu. This is all because the Devils were going into that season with no 1st round pick due to #1. Funny enough, that team could have made the playoffs if they weren't epically bad in the shootout, but they would've been easy first round fodder.
5. Keeping David Conte (the scouting director) employed purely because of what he did in the 90's.

Other than that, I don't know. Not bringing back Nieuwendyk was a mistake for the 2003/04 team. But Lou was genuinely a genius for about 25 years. I'm actually pretty happy for him succeeding elsewhere, as it shows that he truly is a HoF talent GM. But yeah, those last few years with the Devils were rough.

Lou and his always reload never rebuild mentality is what doomed NJ for years to come, he was just smart enough to see how badly he'd messed it all up and peace out on the team.

The fact that he actually thought the league would allow a 17 year deal, that was clearly cap circumvention to be approved simply because other teams were doing similar deals and getting them approved was insane, no person thought that deal should or would pass.

Giving concussion prone Ryane Clowe a 5 year 25 million dollar deal, only to lose him to.... you guessed it concussion problems and giving Volchenkov a massive deal once the league was heading towards a speed game were Lou masterclasses in futility.

He constantly had to buy out players just to pay the next guy. If there was a mistake involving Lou it wasn't letting him go, it was allowing him to keep the job.

 

[KovalchukFistPump]

Letting Rafalski walk in 2007 was probably worse than Nieuwendyk.

I'd argue trading away Claude Lemieux in 95 and also not re-signing him after 2000 were his biggest mistakes in regards to players slipping away. Imagine having Claude in 2001 against the Avs.

Meh, team was loaded in 2001. They just lost to an equally loaded team in 7, and Brodeur was OK while Roy was great.

I think Claude wanted too much money in '95, and the Devils were still a budget team then. But yeah, that must have been bad.

I forgot about Rafalski, yeah that was bad, especially since his money was spent on Brian Rolston.

 

[KovalchukFistPump]

Lou and his always reload never rebuild mentality is what doomed NJ for years to come, he was just smart enough to see how badly he'd messed it all up and peace out on the team.

The fact that he actually thought the league would allow a 17 year deal, that was clearly cap circumvention to be approved simply because other teams were doing similar deals and getting them approved was insane, no person thought that deal should or would pass.

Giving concussion prone Ryane Clowe a 5 year 25 million dollar deal, only to lose him to.... you guessed it concussion problems and giving Volchenkov a massive deal once the league was heading towards a speed game were Lou masterclasses in futility.

He constantly had to buy out players just to pay the next guy. If there was a mistake involving Lou it wasn't letting him go, it was allowing him to keep the job.

I think he was semi-forced out, or rather couldn't take an environment where he was the one calling the shots. New management brought in Shero, and I bet behind the scenes there were disagreements where Lou was overruled. Soon after the Shero hire, he ended up leaving to go to Toronto where he had to power-share. But then left to go back to being in full control at NYI.

Just a guy that wants to call the shots and be the boss. I'm sure he thinks of himself as a hockey genius. In many ways and in most years, he was. But when it got bad, that extreme self-confidence was his undoing.

 

[as Pure as Evil]

Burkes kessel trade stalled the leafs in purgatory another few years before embracing a rebuild

 

[Tripledeke333]

This is forgotten, but if Buffalo did not match the Vanek offer sheet, they would have gotten 4 1st rounders from Edmonton (three of which ended up being 1OA).

 

[Headshot77]

Pens: it's hard to say things have gone pretty damn well since like 1984. Naslund for Stojanov?

This is forgotten, but if Buffalo did not match the Vanek offer sheet, they would have gotten 4 1st rounders from Edmonton (three of which ended up being 1OA).

Oh my God...

 

[Nordekes]

Giving Iceburgh an airhorn

 

[Goptor]

Wild: Hiring Chuck Fletcher
Flyers: Hiring Chuck Fletcher

 

[BWJM]

Sometimes I wonder about the 2-3 extra d the Canucks could have if they never signed OEL…

 

[S E P H]

Currently: Avs scouting to the point they've fired two head scouts in less than fourteen years. They hit on all their top 5 picks, but they struggled at 10th overall picking busts such as Jost and Siemens and it's even worse when you go beyond that (lol, picture struggling to draft at 10th overall). Conor Timmins I think has been the only successful non-first-round pick in a very long time for the scouting staff and he isn't even with the team.

Past I: Avs having faith in David Aebischer to replace Patrick Roy. It wasn't that Aebischer was truly awful, but he was severely overrated by the Avs staff which led to at least one other Cup not being won until the salary cap destroyed the core permanently.

Between past and present: Avs signing Iglina and Beauchemin. Both players were completely passed it in the worst way possible and boggled down speed, talent...everything, just so they can play respected veterans 20 minutes a night and give free goals to opponents.

 

[Hasbro]

Morris was in the Eric Brewer category of overhyped young Canadian defensemen.

You have no idea the inferno you are playing with here.

 

[Hasbro]

The Kessel trade comes to mind as a leafs fan lol. That’s not saying he didn’t have some good years with us so don’t jump my nuts.

Holy shit Burke was on an ego trip that summer!

 

[S E P H]

The year is 2001. The Avalanche have just won their second cup.

The Avs core is starting to age out. Sakic is 31, Roy is 35, Foote is 29, Blake is 31. Bourque is 40 and everyone knows he will be retiring. It's already clear at this point who the Avs next generation is, Chris Drury, Alex Tanguay, and Milan Hejduk.

Within the next couple of years Avs trade away Chris Drury for Derek Morris and Alex Tanguay for Jordan Leopold. Drury and Tanguay would go on to be two of the better players of the 2000's, while Leo and Morris were good but not great defensemen. Way to piss away your future.

LaCroix was showing signs of desperation around that point, he lost a lot of trades near that time and the drafting was just as bad. The best player I think we got from 4-6 different draft classes was Johnny Boychuk, who didn't play for us. Others included Budaj, Svatos, Gilbert, and Brad Richardson, not going to replace anybody with picks like that.