In December of 1990, the Toronto Blue Jays acquired two players from the San Diego Padres in exchange for two fan favorites: Tony Fernandez and Fred McGriff.
Fernandez was one of the original, prodigal finds of the great Latin American scout Epy Guerrero, arriving unheralded from the baseball factory in San Pedro de Macoris, D.R., and taking over the starting shortstop job in 1985 with his magical glove and incredible style. McGriff was just 26 and had averaged 35 home runs over the past three seasons, an elite slugger in his very prime.
One of the incoming players was Joe Carter, whose numbers had fallen off the previous year. San Diego was flipping him after a single season.
And Roberto Alomar? Who the hell was this guy? Baseball America said his brother Sandy was the better prospect.
It hurt, in Toronto. GM Pat Gillick was a bum.
Pain, however, is part of being a fan.
In Toronto, we soon found out what Gillick had seen in Carter and Alomar. In Edmonton and Montreal this morning, many are not there yet with their latest transactions.
Canadiens general manager Marc Bergevin prefers the quiet, steady leadership of Shea Weber to the flash, dash and glitz of P.K. Subban. Yet it was all that flare — on and off the ice — that fostered such deep love for Subban among Habs fans.
Bergevin will never publicly verbalize the elements of Subban’s personality that caused the Canadiens to give up on him, and nor will anyone in Edmonton’s front office publicly share the shortcomings they saw in Taylor Hall’s game that left him “slighted” and a member if the New Jersey Devils.
It hurts.
Hall — who did nothing but get kicked in the teeth in Edmonton under a carousel of new coaches, changing GMs and farcical management that never came close to surrounding Hall with a roster that could contend — and hockey fans in Northern Alberta all feel the pain.
Even more heart wrenching is that it appears the Oilers are finally about to move away from the pain and frustration that Hall has known for his entire career, yet he doesn’t get a chance to enjoy the hard-earned rewards (should they ever materialize).
“You hit the nail on the head there,” Hall lamented Wednesday. “It’s tough. I have a pretty deep connection with the city of Edmonton, I felt like I did everything I could there… It’s pretty hard not to feel slighted; not to be disappointed about how everything shook out.”
Talking to hockey executives, these are the knocks on him as a player: he still has tunnel vision when he steams up the left wing boards with the puck (it’s improving); he takes on three defenders by himself and turns the puck over (he has largely figured that out now); he doesn’t do enough to make players around him better (even though the analytics disprove that), yet demands the puck at the tops of the defensive circles and wants to transport it up ice (only four LWs had more assists than his 39 last season).
But the refrain that the room isn’t big enough for him and Connor McDavid is pure fiction. “He was the leader on the ice by the end of the season,” Hall said of McDavid in his post-season scrum. For the former face of the franchise to admit that is no small bit of humility in a world full of Alpha dogs.
“You envision something happening, and it’s disappointing when you don’t get to see that through,” Hall said. “I wish those players luck. Especially Connor. He’s a great person and a great player.”
So why move Hall for Adam Larsson? Why not Jordan Eberle or Ryan Nugent-Hopkins?
For me, the biggest surprise is learning the exact value of Hall on the open market. Or any scoring winger, when the target is a top pairing defenceman.
Perhaps this is simply bad judgment on Chiarelli’s part. And maybe this trade will never stack up, as Larsson’s staid, steady game will never stack up statistically against Hall’s production. But he shopped this trade for many months, and if you think there was a better deal out there that he simply never found, well, I’ll give a veteran GM more credit than that.
Just as the Blue Jays went from being a contender to a two-time champion in the 90s, this deal is about Larsson hopping over the boards to protect a 3-1 lead, rather than Hall heading out there with the Oilers goalie pulled late in a 4-3 game.
No one is saying that Adam Larsson will find the Hall of Fame the way Alomar did. But we’ve seen what a team centered around young, fast, offensively talented players has accomplished in Edmonton.
Now, we will begin to see what the results look like when those forwards are not playing 55 per cent of the game behind their own blue line — or more, against the elite NHL teams.
In the end, Carter looked better than McGriff ever had as he touched ‘em all in ’93, the second of back-to-back World Series’ for the Blue Jays.
And Larsson? He’ll look better making an outlet pass in a playoff game than Hall did going end to end in another meaningless game in December.
Chiarelli’s reputation is relying on that coming to fruition.
