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What is the single worst decision your team ever made?

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Ever? They’re over 100 years old.

The cluster of bad decisions pre-cap when they had elite goaltending and a solidly above average D group but managed to get only one winger good enough to skate a regular shift with Sundin in 13 seasons. That guy who isn’t in the HoF but every year at least one worse player gets in.

Kessel for Seguin and Hamilton is the worst one-off.

Kenny Jonsson and the pick that became Luongo for a washed Wendel Clark revisit was also bad.
 
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Man where to start with Detroit……

In the O6 days there were a ton of bad moves. Trading Terry Sawchuk. Trading Glenn Hall. Trading Johnny Bucyk. Trading Red Kelly. Trading Ted Lindsay. Basically forcing Gordie Howe to go to the WHA. It’s a long laundry list. Jack Adams and James Norris were pretty awful and petty and made moves just to spite players at the detriment of the team.

Post expansion the team was mostly crap so it’s harder to find good moves than bad ones. Taking Joe Murphy 1st overall in 1986 was pretty bad instead of Jimmy Carson, Vincent Damphousse, or Brian Leetch. Trading Marcel Dionne was bad too but rumor was he wouldn’t resign with Detroit so they made to move him.

During the playoff streak not many terrible moves. The one standout was opting to sign Johan Franzen over Marian Hossa. No clue what they were thinking there. Letting Fedorov walk over Ilitch having hurt feelings was also a pretty dumb move. Trading essentially the Vasilevsky pick for Kyle Quincey is still dumb, especially since the team let him go for free on waivers just 4 years prior.

Recently, passing on Quinn Hughes for Zadina still is a head scratcher. Anyone local who watched him play at UM knew he was a stud.

Worst ever idk. One of those early Adams trades probably. Detroit could have been on equal footing with the Habs dynasty teams if you still had those players instead of giving them away for essentially nothing. If I had to pick one it would probably be the Sawchuk series of trades. First he was sent to Boston for nothing and then reacquainted 2 years later for 500 goal scorer HHOF players Johnny Bucyk. That’s really bad.
 
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Wild haven’t even been good enough to ever make a critical mistake. We’ve never had the ingredients to be real contenders. Burns trade probably was the worst single move.
 
Before the cap, the Oilers turned down a Comrie for Perry trade. It was a quite petty negotiation as well, with Lowe insisting the Ducks pay extra money ( which you could do then)

That one move might have got us a cup in 2006 and at least would have made the post finals team respectable. We could have avoided the decade of darkness.

Also the deal included another 1st round pick from the Ducks to the Oilers. That pick ended up top 10.
 
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DekeyPete said:
Trading Cam Neely to the Bruins.
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Would cam neely ever be cam neely if he didn't get shipped to the bruins though? I thought that sandbox called Boston garden was perfect for him.

Would canucks even have known how to unlock him?
 
Three On Zero said:
The issue with this is if Edmonton didn’t, another team would have. He seemed to be the #1 for most teams.
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Can’t argue that. Except if you read some of the information available on the lead up to that draft it sounds like the Oiler management wasn’t fully convinced. Sounds like perhaps ownership influenced the final decision. We may never know unless someone writes a book someday.
 
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Sharks trading the #2 pick in 93 for 6 and Makarov (more or less). Hartford took Pronger. We took Victor Kozlov.

The Nuge said:
Not really. Yakupov’s rookie year was as good of season as anything anyone in the top 4 did in their entire career. It was just an awful draft class
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Yeah. Outside of Vasi I don’t think anyone in that first round would have changed things.
 
TheBeard said:
Yeah. Outside of Vasi I don’t think anyone in that first round would have changed things.
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Like, obviously there were some solid players. You can get at least a #2 or 3 dman if you went with Rielly or Lindholm, or a legit winger in Forsberg, but none of them were remotely in talks to go 1st overall. Of the top 15 players drafted, there’s like 5 at most who aren’t some degree of a bust. It’s hard to say picking one bust over a different bust is the worst decision in franchise history. Especially when you have gems like trading the best player to ever play (while still in his prime), or trading 16th and 33rd overall for Reinhart (who played less than 40 career games and last played in the UK)
 
The Nuge said:
Like, obviously there were some solid players. You can get at least a #2 or 3 dman if you went with Rielly or Lindholm, or a legit winger in Forsberg, but none of them were remotely in talks to go 1st overall. Of the top 15 players drafted, there’s like 5 at most who aren’t some degree of a bust. It’s hard to say picking one bust over a different bust is the worst decision in franchise history. Especially when you have gems like trading the best player to ever play (while still in his prime), or trading 16th and 33rd overall for Reinhart (who played less than 40 career games and last played in the UK)
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Yeah. If they would have drafted one of the two D-men that followed it would have been just as bad if not worse.
 
This is a great topic. Every franchise has a list of these. For the Penguins there are several candidates. Trading Marcus Naslund for Alex Stojanov, the Jagr trade return was awful, making a trade with Montreal for Rod Schutt when they thought they were getting Steve Shutt (for real), and hiring Ron Hextall as GM. But I think I would have to say Howard Baldwin's ownership group choosing to renovate the Civic Arena in the mid 90s instead of building a new arena. Not that getting one would have been a slam dunk but that kept the team in a smaller, outdated arena where they also didn't own the building management/food and beverage rights. The team went into bankruptcy in 99 and then had to wait eight years fighting for a new arena and (maybe) almost relocating. That could have turned out a lot worse but it set the table for about twelve difficult years for the franchise.
 
As a Leafs fan, the Raycroft for Rask trade was bad enough. But what really put the cherry on top of the steel-toed boot to the nuts is the fact that Boston would have gladly accepted Pogge instead, but JFJ insisted they take Rask.
 
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brentashton said:
Nail Yakupov.


Mic





Dropped.
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Not even close to the worst decision the Oilers have made. It was either him or Murray at #1. The mistake they made was not trading him when it didn't look like he'd be a fit and he still had value.

Some of the biggest mistakes in team history were selling off the superstar players of the 80's. Keeping Barry Fraser as the head scout after his run of luck in the early 80's and letting him "scout" from Mexico. Hiring Peter Chiarelli.
 
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Schennanigans said:
Be it the wrong decision at the draft or a UFA signing or whatever it is. What is the one thing that was worse than anything they ever done? As a Leaf fan the Kessel trade is up there, but in the end it wasn’t that bad. Trading Rask is probably up there too. But I think the worst had to be trading away our pick that would’ve given us the chance to draft Scott Niedermayer. 🥲
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Hextall to the Penguins was the worst debacle since the 90s for the Pens. Utter mess left by Hextall has been cleaned up by Dubas but the position shouldn’t have ever been so low and dire.
 
For the Avs, I think it was not going all in with MacKinnon, Kadri and Makar on cheap contracts. I think if they truly went with a commit to the Cup approach they’d have won 2-4 Cups with that core rather than the 1.
 
McShogun99 said:
Not even close to the worst decision the Oilers have made. It was either him or Murray at #1. The mistake they made was not trading him when it didn't look like he'd be a fit and he still had value.

Some of the biggest mistakes in team history were selling off the superstar players of the 80's. Keeping Barry Fraser as the head scout after his run of luck in the early 80's and letting him "scout" from Mexico. Hiring Peter Chiarelli.
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We see things differently.

That’s ok.
 
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