Do the Oilers Ever Win a Something for Futures trade?
by dawgbone98 on Mar 4, 2011 5:00 PM MST
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The Dustin Penner Trade got me thinking, how often have the Oilers ever benefited in a deal where they traded an NHL player for unknowns?
I'm not talking about trades like Esa Tikkanen for Doug Weight, a trade where the Oilers got back a younger player who was already establishing themselves in the NHL, but a trade where it's prospects and/or picks coming back?
Now I think we need to define a "won" trade. I guess the term isn't so much as won the trade as it is got a good deal given the circumstances. If you've got a guy who will be a UFA and won't sign, getting something useful is probably a win. The criteria I'm using is as follows:
1. Did the return at least get something that was a decent replacement, or was the return the main piece of another trade in the future that brought a quality player (i.e. Hamrlik->Brewer->Pronger)?
2. If the Oilers were going to lose the player anyways (i.e. they were pricing themselves out of Edmonton), did they at least get players who were able to contribute beyond a minimal role (i.e. Guerin->Carter+)?
3. Any players they got back had to have less than 150 NHL games.
4. Draft pick position doesn't count as a win. They need to have actually used it to pick a good player. Conversely it's not a loss if the other team picked a really good player with a late pick involved in the trade.
In the end, what I did was try and follow along through. Just because player X got traded for a 2nd round pick doesn't make it bad. What makes it bad if that 2nd round pick doesn't pan out, whether via the draft pick itself or through a future trade. In other words if you traded a good play for 4 assets and then traded those 4 assets for another good player, it's the 2 players that matter.
All trades are Chronological order from earliest to latest starting from 1990.
February 24, 1993 - Joe Murphy to Chicago for Igor Kravchuk & Dean McAmmond: Joe Murphy was an important part of the 1990 Stanley Cup team and had come off a year where he averaged a PPG and scored 24 points in 16 playoff games. Murphy held out the start of the 92-93 season until he was traded. He played 9 more seasons and his highest point totals after he was traded were 70, 51,48, 45, 41. Kravchuk played parts of 4 seasons with Edmonton, hitting 50 points his first full year. Dean McAmmond was a useful 3rd liner for most of his time in Edmonton, hitting 50 points once. this was a trade where Murphy priced himself out of Edmonton and the Oilers were able to get a decent defenceman and a useful NHL depth player. Verdict: Win
March 15, 1994 - Dave Manson, 1994 6th RD to Winnipeg for Boris Mironov, 1994 1st RD (Bonsignore), 1994 4thRD (Adam Copeland): Dave Manson was a mean, dirty defenceman capable of putting up points. He faded badly after this trade, scoring 30 or more points just twice more. Boris Mironov ended up being a solid defenceman for the Oilers and he alone was enough of a return to make it a win, it's too bad the 1st rounder flopped. Verdict: Win
March 21, 1994 - Craig MacTavish to NY Rangers for Todd Marchant. MacTavish was a long serving Oiler who was there for a lot of the good times andstuck with them when the team started selling everything off. Marchant played 9 very effective seasons in Edmonton, MacT played just parts of 3 more. Verdict: Win
January 11, 1996 - Bill Ranford to Boston for Sean Brown, Mariusz Czerkawski, 1996 1st RD (Matthieu Descoteaux): Bill Ranford was on the down swing of his career at this point. He was only a starting goaltender for one more seasons after the trade. Sean Brown was a serviceable #7 and Czerkawski was a useful 2nd line player. Descoteaux never amounted to anything in the organization. Verdict: Win
March 03, 1997 - Miroslav Satan to Buffalo for Craig Millar & Barrie Moore: Satan scored the same number of goals 2 years after the trade in one season (40) as Millar & Moore played in games as Oilers. Combined. Verdict: Loss
August 25, 1997 - Mariuz Czerkawski to NY Islanders for Dan Lacouture: Umm, yeah. Slats second awful trade in a couple of months. Verdict Loss
June 24, 2000 - Roman Hamrlik to NY Islanders for Eric Brewer, Josh Green, 2000 2nd RD (Brad Winchester): Roman Hamrlik was a minute eater for the Oilers. He never lived up to his draft selection or that 65 point season he had early on in his career but he was a good defenceman who could play in all situations. At the time he was dealt he was one of the highest paid players in Oilers history, and something had to give. Eric Brewer wasn't as good as Hamrlik, but he ended up being the key part of the Pronger deal. Josh Green never amounted to much and Brad Winchester was a serviceable 4th liner after spending several years trying to make it to the NHL. Brewer being the primary piece of the Pronger deal makes the difference. Verdict: Win
I''velinked the next 2 trades because the first is an extension of the second.
July 01, 2001 - Doug Weight, Michael Riesen to St. Louis for Marty Reasoner, 2002 2nd RD (Jeff Drouin-Deslauriers) & 2002 2nd RD (Jarret Stoll), Jan Horacek: This one is sort of controversial. Doug Weight was a fan favourite and was the best Oiler since the dynasty days. I still don't have an issue with this trade on it's merits. The Oilers got a couple of useful players in Reasoner and Hecht (who was parlayed into JDD & Stoll). Stoll was parlayed into part of Visnovsky trade, who then became Whitney. The Oilersmanaged to translate assets into a decent player 10 years down the road, so it's hard to argue with that. The fact that Weight was never the same player outside of Edmonton also has an impact here. Verdict: Win
October 07, 2002 - Mike Grier to Washington for 2003 2nd RD, 2003 3rd RD (Zack Stortini): The 2003 2nd was later traded with Niinimaa for Torres and Isbister but wasn't the key component of that deal. At this point in time the Oilers gave up a good 3rd liner in Grier for not a heck of a lot. Stortini was recently waived and doesn't look like he'll be an Oiler again. Verdict: Loss
This next one is strange so I'm using the entire deal.
June 30, 2003 - 2nd RD 2004, 4th RD 2004, Stephen Valiquette, Dwight Helminen to NY Rangers for Petr Nedved. Not quite in the same scope, but the original deal was Jussi Markkanen & a 4th for the rights to Brian Leetch. This was back in the day when teams would receive a compensation pick if they lost a UFA. The pick the Oilers got was a 2004 2nd RD pick. At the deadline that year, the Oilers re-acquired Markkanen and Nedved for the Leetch Comp pick, Valiquette and Helminen. In the end the trade worked out to this: Rangers get 60 games of Markkanen, 2nd, 4th, Valiquette, Helminen and the Oilers get 16 games of Markkanen, 16 games of Nedved. I can't see how this anything but a poor use of assets. Verdict: Loss
December 16, 2003 - Mike Comrie to Philadelphia for Jeff Woywitka, 2004 1st RD (Rob Schremp), 2005 3rd RD (Dan Syvret): The infamous Comrie trade. Neither Syvret (traded for Potulny) nor Scremp amounted to anything in Edmonton. Woywitka was a secondary piece of the Pronger deal. The only thing that makes this deal close is that Comrie struggled for the most part outside of Edmonton. He was never able to top his goal or point totals from his first full year in Edmonton. The other question is how big of a piece was Woywitka in the Pronger deal? I'm going to assume minor. When you combine that with the trade they didn't make (Perry), it's harder to justify the deal (I know that's outside the scope, but too bad). Verdict: Loss
March 09, 2004 - Tommy Salo & 6th RD 2005 to Colorado for Tom Gilbert: Um, yeah. Verdict Win
June 26, 2004 - Jason Chimera & 3rd RD 2004 to Phoenix for 2004 2nd RD (Geoff Paukovich) & 2004 4th RD (Liam Reddox): Liam Reddox has covered his bet as a 4th rounder but I don't think he's as good or better than Chimera yet. Paukovich is basically a write-off at this point. Verdict Loss
July 03, 2006 - Chris Pronger to Anaheim for Joffrey Lupul, Ladislav Smid, 2007 1st RD, 2008 1st RD, 2008 2nd RD. Lupul has basically translated into Jim Vandermeer since this deal. The 2007 1st RD was traded with the Oilers 2nd round to pick Riley Nash who was then traded for a 2010 2nd RD pick (Martin Marincin). The 2008 2nd RD pick was traded to get the Oilers 2008 3rd RD pick to do the Penner offersheet. As of right now it's Smid, JVM and Eberle for Pronger, who was arguably signed to the best contract in the league at the time. Eberle is good, but he's got a long way to go to be Pronger. Verdict Loss
February 02, 2007 - Ryan Smyth to NY Islanders for Robert Nilsson, Ryan O'Marra, 2007 1st RD (Alex Plante): Nilsson is being paid to stay away, O'Marra is playing the checking role everyone envisioned in the wrong league. Even though Smyth has slowed down a touch, Plante(if his offense doesn't pick up) needs to have a long NHL career with the Oilers to come close to making this trade worthwhile. Verdict Loss
June 27, 2009 - Kyle Brodziak & 2009 6th RD for 2009 4th RD (Kyle Bigos) & 2009 5th RD (Olivier Roy): Even if Olivier Roy becomes a franchise goaltender, the Oilers could have kept Brodziak and drafted Roy instead of Bigos or Abney. The Oilers still haven't replaced Brodziak. Verdict Loss
By my eye, the Oilers did rather well in these sorts of trades under Sather, the obvious misfires were Satan and Czerkawski. Lowe started off well, with the Hamrlik, Weight and Hecht trades all working out well for the Oilers. The problem has been that since then, most of them have failed. The only one you can consider a win is the Gilbert-Salo one. But in reality getting a minor league player would have made that trade worth it. After that season Salo never played another NHL game.
7 of the last 8 trades (not including the recent Penner one) have resulted in the Oilers getting virtually nothing for something. Not only have they gotten killed on the trades involving good players (Smyth), they've failed to address the losses of bottom 6 players like Grier, Chimera & Brodziak.
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Draft pick position doesn’t count as a win. They need to have actually used it to pick a good player.
Tambellini doesn’t share your opinion. In a rebuild picks are all that matter.
Everyone knows rock attained perfection in 1974. It's a scientific fact.
It works both ways though. As long as you convert it to something good that’s all that matters. It’s a bit revisionist but I think it works both ways. Sometimes you win where it doesn’t look like you did (i.e. Weight) and sometimes you lose a lot worse than you’d expect (Smyth for 3 first rounders).
In theory, there is little difference between practice and theory, but in practice there is!
Great post. It’s nice to think of some wins for a change.
MacT for Marchant and Salo for Gilbert. Good times.
Everyone knows rock attained perfection in 1974. It's a scientific fact.
gilbert sucks…that soft, mistake making, non scoring waste of human flesh….better trade him for Peter Holland and 1st
Rebuild is a convenient excuse for GMs who dont wish to do their jobs
Just because player X got traded for a 2nd round pick doesn’t make it bad. What makes it bad if that 2nd round pick doesn’t pan out, whether via the draft pick itself or through a future trade.
This seems kind of wacky to me. Unless the trade is made at the draft and you’re targeting a specific player (e.g. Nash for Marincin), it seems to me that it’s much better to judge by the future value of the pick at the time the trade was made (since the team doesn’t know who will be available), rather than judging the trade by the performance of the player picked. If the Oilers had gotten, for example, Ottawa’s first round pick yesterday instead of LA’s, I would say that’s a much better return. I don’t see why that evaluation should change depending on how well the player picked performs.
The biggest fanana of the Havana Bananas.
The point was not the value at the time of the trade, but whether or not the trade worked out.
A second round pick for Mike Grier isn’t bad value. What’s bad value is that the 2nd round pick never panned out and you never replaced Mike Grier.
It’s a post trade evaluation about whether these sort of trades have worked out for Edmonton, a cautionary tale to the “build for the future” and the “can’t have enough picks/prospects” types.
Often times, you just don’t get back what you gave up.
In theory, there is little difference between practice and theory, but in practice there is!
I hope the caution is not “don’t trade for draft picks”. The caution should be, if you go that route, you had damn well spend what you have to spend to build the best damn scouting staff on the planet. Because if your scouting staff is weak (which certainly was the case in Edmonton over those years) its disasterous. But if you have Detroit or Colorado’s scouting staff, go to town.
What I would like, given where we are now, to see is Katz investing in THE BEST scouting staff in the league. Paying top dollar and attracting THE BEST scouts. Its our only hope right now. MBS is good and the team seems good, but a few bone-head picks from the last couple of years indicate there is still room for improvement.
The caution is that it’s very hard to come out on the winning side of these sort of trades.
I’m starting to go over a lot of the recent ones over the past few years and the winning % on them is pretty low.
In theory, there is little difference between practice and theory, but in practice there is!
I think one of the lessons really ought to be “don’t trade premium assets for draft picks” (at least not for the ones that are usually available). The league as a whole just isn’t very good at drafting it once you get past the first half of the first round, so those picks aren’t very valuable. I don’t agree with everything that the Falconer did in his study, but it is a nice graphical representation of the fact that even the best drafting teams struggle to perform well at the draft (and that Detroit isn’t nearly as good as you think).
The biggest fanana of the Havana Bananas.
by Scott Reynolds on Mar 4, 2011 10:24 AM MST up reply actions
Trying to convince most hockey fans that the Red Wings aren’t draft day wizards but have just hit a few home runs that are still paying off is nearly impossible. The Devils have a similar reputation that’s impossible to shake despite only picking 4 legitimate NHLers in the last decade (Parise, Zajac, Bergfors, Janssen). But people never seem to see past the first two names before declaring them geniuses.
Agreed. Detroit drafting has become stuff of legends due to a couple of picks they made 10 years ago.
Right before I close the door I yell "Pizza's here" into my emplty appartment so the delivery guy doesn't think All that Pizza is for me!
Not just them, but Franzen, too. Even with all those later-round picks, they’re only icing three first round picks, I think—Stuart (another team), Kronwall + Howard (home-grown). Pretty stark if you compare with the Caps, who have AO, Backstrom, Semin, Gordon, Johansson, Carlson, Alzner, Schultz, Green, Varlamov, Fehr as home-grown first rounders, plus some others that have spent most of their time in the organization.
I guess it all evens out.
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by red army line on Mar 5, 2011 11:26 AM MST up reply actions
That makes sense. Use premium assets for actual players (or maybe high-level prospects) and use decent but not excellent players for draft picks, then? Seems logical.
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"It is a mistake to try to look too far ahead. The chain of destiny can only be grasped one link at a time." --Sir Winston Churchill (1874 – 1965)
More or less. You can’t really expect to get any kind of impact player back if you’re trading Brad Winchester, so a third rounder looks pretty good to me. And with expiring contracts, sometimes a pick is the best you can do. Then again, if you can turn a few months of Radek Dvorak into a legit player under twenty-five, well, all the power to you.
The biggest fanana of the Havana Bananas.
by Scott Reynolds on Mar 5, 2011 8:08 AM MST up reply actions 1 recs
I see where you’re going with this. If I understand correctly, the point isn’t the evaluation of each individual trade so much as getting a better idea of what to expect from this kind of transaction. I think it’s likely more helpful to look at the expected value by looking at all picks (rather than just the ones traded for in specific instances), but I can understand that concrete examples often help to illustrate a point better than a chart with some numbers.
The biggest fanana of the Havana Bananas.
by Scott Reynolds on Mar 4, 2011 10:29 AM MST up reply actions
Dave Manson Trade
you forgot to add that Mats Lindgren was part of that Dave Manson trade. Lindgren was a quality checker wose injuries robbed him of his offensive potential and, ultimatley, his career. Slats was able to deal Lindgren away for Tommy Salo in another one of his established player for a player just starting to gain traction in the bigs. This was Slats’ forte and one K-Lowe never mastered.
The sad part, outside of the 2006 season (where Lowe must’ve sold his soul for mangerial competency for one season), Slats set the leadership core that was in place long after he left and K-Lowe never really replaced it.
If you look at the core for this team through the early part of this century, Jason Smith, Ethan Moreau, Ryan Smyth, Todd Marchant, etc., etc. were all in place long before Kevin Lowe ran this franchise into the ground.
by Christopher Gibson-Tyszkiewicz on Mar 4, 2011 6:16 PM MST reply actions
I think you have to consider as well the context of the trades. With something like the Weight trade, there was a finite number of games that the Oilers would get out of Weight before he hit UFA and priced himself out of range. So I wouldn’t consider anything more than the 2001-02 season in regards to the value Weight brought going forward. Which tilts things in favor of the Oilers quite easily. I think any trades made when a team is against the cap ceiling could be evaluated in a similar fashion (Although GM stupidity will contribute more to this second scenario).
With the Penner trade, the Oilers could both afford him and likely would have cap room, so looking at his entire future career in evaluating the trade is fair.
I addressed that early on…. the best example was the Hamrlik trade. If Brewer never gets traded for Pronger I still think it’s a win because they got a decent player in returned who provided some value for a player they weren’t going to be able to keep.
In theory, there is little difference between practice and theory, but in practice there is!
@ Double DD
I think the value of the trade should include whether or not the team backed itself into a corner. Waiting until the last minute to trade a UFA and getting little is poor management of assets. Trade them sooner and get more, it’s not like they don’t know when the contract expires.
@gcw-rocks
I agree that some chances need to be taken – no risk no reward. But there is a definable value to draft picks – the stats are there for success rates based on draft position.
The only safe chance of return is a lottery pick. So valuable players should be traded for those or actual NHL players. Late #1 round or after is hard pressed to return an NHL player of any type, let alone good.
The Oilers let one of the best post lockout LW go for a potential shut down D who is still only something like a 25% chance of making it (and you don’t trade #1 line forwards for shut down D unless they’re Pronger or Chara) and 2 picks with very little chance of even lacing them up in the bigs.
A good gambler would see those odds as pretty bad. Not a good risk-reward ratio. Might appeal to a problem gambler – maybe that describes the current management’s style.
FastOil:
Hey, I wouldn’t have made the trade. I think Tambi actually negotiated against himself by making Penner an option for LA. The smart move would have been to have kept Penner off the table and made it Hemsky for Schenn or nothing. There was no requirement to trade Penner at that time. Hemsky for Schenn is a gamble worth taking if you are the Oilers since you need a high ceiling centre much more than a winger. Heck, I would have even thrown in a sweetener to close the deal if that’s what it took because that gamble, in my view, would be worth it.
With Lombardi under HUGE pressure to make a deal, Tambi gave him an out by putting Penner in play. Pretty damn stupid. Why would you want to give Lombardi an out when he was the only one with something to loose? Makes my blood boil.
I wrote an article here on how the Oilers should be focused on being competitive next year, and how trading Penner and Hemsky for players that weren’t in the NHL or NHL-ready was foolishness.
With Lombardi under HUGE pressure to make a deal, Tambi gave him an out by putting Penner in play. Pretty damn stupid. Why would you want to give Lombardi an out when he was the only one with something to loose? Makes my blood boil.
I had an IM conversation the next day in which I postulated that Lombardi played Tambellini by keeping the possibility of Schenn for Hemsky alive until the afternoon of the deadline, thereby cornering Tambellini and flipping the pressure back on him.
I don’t think it’s out of the realm of possibility that Lombardi wanted Penner all along.
Editor of The Copper & Blue, and leader of The Cult Of Hartikainen.
Wow…if that were the cae, props to Lombardi,….that would require some balls to pull ot off
Right before I close the door I yell "Pizza's here" into my emplty appartment so the delivery guy doesn't think All that Pizza is for me!
If that’s true that Lombardi player Tambi that way, then somebody needs to hand Tambellini a copy of “Getting to Yes”. He should have known his BATNA was walking away and used it. The whole point of having a BATNA is to keep the pressure off you so you don’t make a deal under pressure you will regret later.
I have no idea if it’s the case or not, but the way the whole thing went down just seems odd. Something’s off.
Editor of The Copper & Blue, and leader of The Cult Of Hartikainen.
A bit late for comment, but I feel the Oilers biggest management issue is an inability to make good high level deals. Tambellini does allright on the small ones.
While we can’t know for sure what went down, or conversations with Penner, it looks to me like this got out of control on Steve-o. No need to do the deal at all, he still had lots of time to move him if desired.
Having patience, being firm but willing to look at options, and pitching constantly is what needs to happen and I don’t see it from Lowe or Steve-o. I do see other GM’s (although it’s likely not the majority) able to find hockey trades.
Although I usually get a lot of push back if I mention it, I think Penner and Hemsky (thinking pre injury) would bring a lottery first. Only the Leafs and Oilers can be constantly bad and sell out. The other teams have financial pressures, the cap floor to meet, the need to ice a watchable product.
Penner and Hemsky are 2nd tier premium players, thus more affordable – an astute GM should be able to make that deal if his ear is to the ground and he’s in the loop. I’m not sure Tambellini has the ear of many GM’s.
You're doing it wrong
Re: “Ryan Smyth to NY Islanders for Robert Nilsson, Ryan O’Marra, 2007 1st RD (Alex Plante)” — you can’t measure the trade of a pending UFA as a rental to another team by comparing the young prospects that come back in return and expecting them to equate to the rental player. That’s not how it works.
15 games of Ryan Smyth is going to fetch you “a couple of bust prospects we happen to have laying around”, not “here we expect 1 of these guys to turn into Ryan Smyth and play a long and prosperous career for you”.
Essentially, the Smyth rental was traded for 3 lottery tickets. 2 of the tickets (Nilsson and Plante) lost (yeah that’s right, I’m calling Plante a bust) while the third won us $5 in O’Marra filling a depth role way down in OKC. That’s about par for the course, I’d call the trade a draw.
I don’t think getting a career minor leaguer out of a deal for a 1st line player (even a rental) is a win by any stretch of the imagination.
This also ignores whether it needed to get to that point with Smyth, but that’s a whole different question (and one I’m not really interested in).
The idea behind these trades is to get something in return that can help your club in some role in the future.
One of the criteria for a guy pricing himself out was whether they got something that could contribute beyond a minimal role. If Plante can become a regular defender in the NHL for the Oilers (or they can swap him for something that does become a regular contributor at the NHL level), then the status of this trade will change.
To be honest, I don’t think I set the criteria very high and the Smyth trade definitely hasn’t met that criteria.
In theory, there is little difference between practice and theory, but in practice there is!
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