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Worst Rangers trade of all time

Revel said:
Trading away a productive 25 year old Zubov pissed me off. He and Nedved were traded to Pitt for Ulf frickin' Samuelson :shakehead and Luc Robitaille. Zubov had 89 points our Cup year and 36 pts in 38 games the following year...then we traded him. Luc couldn't even match Zubov's offensive production. I understand unloading Nedved...that was fine....but Zubov? Broke my heart.
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This was the worst trade for me , by far! Followed by the Kovalev for Nedved trade!
 
Miamipuck said:
The one I hated and still do was the Zubov trade, that was probably the worst in my time.

I didn't like the Amonte or Weight trades either but I suppose they won the cup so at least they're tolerable at a base level.
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A lot of those 94 trades were really bad in terms of what we gave up, but we won the cup so it doesn't matter. If we had lost that year, those trades would look terrible in hindsight.
 
In order:

Middleton for Hodge
Zubov
Leetch

I'll still never forgive Sather for trading Leetch
 
Middleton-Hodge by a country mile.

Ratelle-Espo , if alone, was fair.

Park-Vadnais, if it had taken place as a one-for-one, would have been worse than Hodge-Middleton.
 
Hellion said:
Didn't the 5th turn into a 2nd because NYR reached the Conference Final? Or am I mixing things up here...?
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We had to make the ECF (or resign him) for the 5th to become a 2nd. We lost to Boston and kept our 2nd (became Halverson)
 
Want to point out a trade that at the time may not have seemed like a bad idea, but did not work out at all.

Sandstrom ( I loved that dude) and Granato for one Bernie Nicholls. Nicholls went from a 150 pt season to merely half that not long after the trade.

Worked out poorly.
 
I Eat Crow said:
In order:

Middleton for Hodge
Zubov
Leetch

I'll still never forgive Sather for trading Leetch
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Flame me if you will, but in all honestly, Leetch was a ***** about that trade. It wasn't a real "see ya Charlie" trade. He was a rental, and he had the whole lockout to rest. He chose not to sign with the Rangers, and he played with Boston. You have to remember that he was traded to Toronto in 2004. He signed as a UFA with Boston after the lockout. I agree with you on the first two trades, but I really disagree with the Leetch trade.

Moreover, there had to be at least 100 trades at deadline day in 2004. People were talking about the WHA making a return if the NHL collapsed.

Furthermore, Leetch had been playing like **** for a while. The real crime was how poorly the Rangers chose with the return from Toronto.
 
nyrleetch said:
Man, I think Nash underperforms in the playoffs, but we clearly won that trade.
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I don't think we lost the trade on paper. I think the issue is could the Rangers have traded [yes, hypothetical] the same package they gave for Nash for a stronger playoff team during The King's window. I do agree, and I think you are alluding to this, that people are having real myopia with the [on paper] worth of Dubinsky and Anisimov.
 
Amazing Kreiderman said:
I know the trade was part of the reason we won the Cup, but I was devastated when we traded Tony Amonte :(
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Amonte was believed to be [and statistically was] way, way better in the Regular season than the playoffs. I know he scored over 400 regular season goals, but how could anyone not take Noonan and Mattaeu in hind site. I'm actually more pissed about the Gartner/Anderson swap. I understand that Anderson was a hall of fame playoff gamer in his day, but I think the Gartner trade had more to do with Keenan's [supposed] issues with Gartner.
 
Trading away Marc Savard and a first rounder for Lundmark and Hlavac was a disaster. Had this team had Savard, Jagr and Lundqvist at the start of the cap era when Savard ran 4 seasons with over a point per game, this team would've been an immediate contender at he time.
 
for me, some of these are worst trades, some are just trades i hated.

Rick Middleton for Ken Hodge
Jean Ratelle & Brad Park for Esposito
Ridley & Miller for Carpenter
Sandstrom & Granato for Nicholls (Nicholls did land us Messier though)
Gartner for Anderson
Kurri, McSorley, Churla for Ferraro, Laperriere, & Norstrom
Zubov & Nedved for Samuelsson & Robitaille
Kovalev, York for Nedved, Pronger, Tamer
Cloutier, Sundstrom, 1st, 3rd for Pavel Brendl (i was excited at first but just appalled afterwards)
York, 4th for Murray & Poti (just hated the idea that we traded away York at the time)
Knuble for DiMaio (just a 'why???' trade for me at the time. really loved Knubles wrist shot when he was on our team)
Savard, 1st for Lundmark, 3rd, Hlavac
Robitaille for Kevin "my skates are in the Hudson" Stevens
Dom Moore for Adam Hall
Dawes, Kalinin, Prucha for Derek Morris rental
 
Dave Gagner and Caulfield for Paul Boutilier & Jari Gronstrand. That was a very very bad one that people forget ...6 big goal scoring seasons for Gagner in Minny followed .

Ken Linesman for Fred Shero....enough said .


Bob MacMillan former first rounder had almost 600 pts in the NHL for Sacharuk .

Those are 3 nobody ever thinks about . Gagner / Linseman/ MacMillan got us Shero , 2 nobodies and Sacharuk .

Plus as another seasoned vet on here told me....we traded away all the toughness in the early 70's like Durbano/Plager/Dupont and how that could have served us against the rugged Bruin and Flyer clubs that wiped our ass in the corners and in front of the net...
 
Machinehead said:
Zubov for a slow and unskilled Ulf Samuelsson.

Classic case of putting "toughness" first and hockey second.
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I think that's a bit oversimplistic.

Samuelsson was a very good defenseman for a very long time in the NHL, we didn't trade Zubov for Wade Belak.

The biggest challenge was the six year age difference. That meant we were going to get less of Ulf than Zubov.

But the deal essentially amounted to trading a guy who had a very good NHL career and a near HOF career for a guy who had a very good career and a HOF career.

Ironically enough, we seem to forget that there were a lot of less than desirable qualities Zubov had at that point - conditioning, his defense, questions about his mental game.

Those were some of the reasons that Zubov was traded AGAIN a year later to the Stars. It was there, on his third NHL team, that he finally figured a few things out.

I say this not because I think we won the trade, but because I think the myth of the trade has kind of taken on a life of its own.
 
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You are all wrong! Worst trade in Ranger history occurred in 1971. The Rangers trade young Syl Apps Jr for the over the hill thug, Glen Sather. The trade still haunts us today!!!
By the Way, Apps Jr had a terrific career for the Penguins
 
Beacon said:
Trading away Marc Savard and a first rounder for Lundmark and Hlavac was a disaster. Had this team had Savard, Jagr and Lundqvist at the start of the cap era when Savard ran 4 seasons with over a point per game, this team would've been an immediate contender at he time.
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The ironic thing is that I LOVED Savard in the OHL, though I did have some concerns about his attitude at the AHL level (and I think that was a big part of why he was moved from us and, later, Calgary). He finally learned to cool it a little when he got to Atlanta, and his game also found its sweet spot.

Jamie Lundmark still blows my mind. Arguably one of my biggest misses ever. The fact that the kid didn't at least become a very nice second line center still amazes me. But he was also an example of a kid who really struggled to transition his junior game to the pro level.
 
ReggieDunlop68 said:
Flame me if you will, but in all honestly, Leetch was a ***** about that trade. It wasn't a real "see ya Charlie" trade. He was a rental, and he had the whole lockout to rest. He chose not to sign with the Rangers, and he played with Boston. You have to remember that he was traded to Toronto in 2004. He signed as a UFA with Boston after the lockout. I agree with you on the first two trades, but I really disagree with the Leetch trade.

Moreover, there had to be at least 100 trades at deadline day in 2004. People were talking about the WHA making a return if the NHL collapsed.

Furthermore, Leetch had been playing like **** for a while. The real crime was how poorly the Rangers chose with the return from Toronto.
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I'm going to go with three controversial statements (and deal with inevitable backlash):

1. I was sad about the Leetch trade, but I understood the reason and supported it. The Rangers didn't do enough with the assets they received, but I don't disagree with the reasoning.

2. Leetch was essentially done as an elite player at the age of 29. He was a very good player for many years after that, but he was never the same.

3. I love Leetch, but I tend to think he's a little overrated. A HOF career, but Ranger fans tend to act like he was the second coming of Bobby Orr when most people outside of NY don't view him as higher than maybe the third best defenseman of his generation.
 
A lot of people are ignoring the context of the Zubov trade. The Rangers had just gotten absolutely destroyed by a big, physical Flyers team in the playoffs. Samuelsson brought a much needed element to the team. I understand not liking the trade. I didn't really either. But there was definitely a certain logic to it.

The Kurri trade is pretty easily the worst trade the Rangers made in my time as a fan. What's funny is that it came right before I had any sophisticated understanding of the mechanisms behind trades. I was excited to get Kurri because I didn't fully realize that Kurri wasn't the same player I read about in books about the Oilers. I remember breaking the news of the deal to my dad and him being unhappy with it. Terrible trade, but I learned a lot from it.

I don't really consider any of the 2004 firesale trades to be part of this conversation. The return on those was less important than the act of changing the direction of the organization.
 
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