Nobody cares what the winners spent to win but everyone remembers what the losers spent to fail.
I recently took a look at what the last 11 Stanley Cup Champions have done at the trade deadline. The reason we looked at those 11 teams is because they’re all of the Cup winners we’ve seen since the birth of the NHL’s salary cap.
What about teams that lose?
The goal of these “trade tree” posts are to look at how trades could spread and expand over time. This is going to do that in a bit of a different way, examining the cost of the Leafs’ big deadline buys in 2003 and 2004.
The Leafs teams of 2002-03 and 2003-04 bought big but their “go for it” attitude was justified. The team had a 100-point 2001-02 season that saw them make it all the way to the Eastern Conference final before falling in six to the Carolina Hurricanes.
The ’02-03 Leafs finished with 98 points and followed with a 103-point regular season, a franchise record that still stands to this day.
These were older, veteran-heavy teams with recent playoff success. If you’re going to go for it, that’s probably a good time.
Here’s how the 2003 deadline shaped up:
March 5, 2003
To Toronto:
- Owen Nolan
To San Jose:
- 2003 1st-rounder (Mark Stuart)
- Alyn McCauley
- Brad Boyes
March 9, 2003
To Toronto:
- Glen Wesley
To Carolina:
- 2004 2nd-rounder (Kyle Wharton)
March 11, 2003
To Toronto:
- Phil Housley
To Chicago:
- 2003 9th-rounder (Chris Porter)
- 2004 4th-rounder (Karel Hromas)
To Toronto:
- Doug Gilmour
To Montreal:
- 2003 6th-rounder (Mark Flood)
Toronto loaded up for their ’03 playoff run but it was all for naught. The Leafs had a double-OT victory in Game 3 to take a 2-1 series lead. The Flyers tied the series 2-2 with a triple-OT win. The Leafs forced Game 7 with a double-OT victory in Game 6. Unfortunately, the Flyers demolished the Leafs 6-1 in the seventh and deciding game.
After 12 points in 14 regular season games with Toronto, Nolan was held to just two playoff assists. Wesley had one assist in five games. Housley had no points in three games. Gilmour didn’t even make it to the post-season after suffering an injury in his first game back in Toronto. Without injuries hampering the Leafs’ big deadline buys, maybe the Leafs beat the Flyers in seven.
Of those four players, only Nolan stuck around for the following season.
As I mentioned, the ’03-04 Leafs set a franchise record for regular season points with 103. They were an older team, they had money, and there was no salary cap yet. Why not load up.
Here’s how the Leafs 2004 trade deadline looked…
March 4, 2004
To Toronto:
- Brian Leetch
- 2004 4th-rounder (Roman Kukumberg)
To New York Rangers
- 2004 1st-rounder (Kris Chucko)
- 2005 2nd-rounder (Michael Sauer)
- Maxim Kondratiev
- Jarkko Immonen
March 9, 2004
To Toronto:
- Ron Francis
To Carolina:
- 2005 4th-rounder (Jared Boll)
The sun was setting on Francis’ career but he could still certainly play. He posted 10 points in his 12 regular season games with the Leafs before the playoffs. Brian Leetch was still an offensive monster on the backend, scoring 15 points in 15 regular season games with the Leafs.
The first round had its ups and downs but the Leafs ended up beating the Ottawa Senators in seven games. You might remember the first period of Game 7 featured two famously brutal goals from Joe Nieuwendyk on Patrick Lalime.
Unfortunately, the Leafs ran into those pesky Flyers again in Round 2.
The Flyers won the first two games. The Leafs won the next two. Philadelphia demolished Toronto 7-2 in Game 5. Then in Game 6…
So there it is. The Leafs took their shot twice and they lost twice.
Nolan didn’t play in the playoffs due to a late season injury – this team really couldn’t catch a break in that department. Leetch had eight assists in 13 games. Francis had four assists in 12 games. Mats Sundin and Nieuwendyk missed four games each. Hockey’s hard, man.
None of Nolan, Francis, or Leetch stayed with the Leafs the following season because there was no following season. The ’04-05 season was cancelled due to the lockout. Once hockey resumed, Leetch went to Boston, Nolan took a full season off before going to Phoenix, and Francis retired.
Now, you can lament these deals when you have the gift of hindsight. You can say the team shouldn’t have mortgaged the future or that they were right to buy at the deadline but they spent too much. You could also say it was all worth it but they had bad luck.
Like I’ve said, if a player you acquired at the deadline isn’t a huge contributor but you win the Stanley Cup, does anybody moan about what you gave up? I mean they might but who cares? You won the Stanley Cup!
Whether you agree with the Leafs’ buys in ’03 and ’04 or not, let’s look at what they got.
Here’s a look at who the Leafs brought in and what they shipped out at the ’03 and ’04 trade deadlines.
That’s simple enough.
What was the regular season impact of Toronto’s ’03 and ’04 trade-deadline acquisitions?
Not a whole lot but that makes sense. With the exception of Nolan, none of these players played regular season games for the Leafs beyond the few weeks they spent with the team after getting traded.
Despite only playing 115 combined games, this group still put up 88 points. That’s decent contribution.
But really, do we care what these guys did in the regular season? The whole reason the Leafs got these players was so that they could tear it up in the playoffs. So – how did they do in the post-season?
Brian Leetch’s eight playoff assists make up more than half of the points scored by Toronto’s traded-deadline acquisitions in ’03 and ’04 combined. These six players, who cost: a player, three prospects, and eight picks, combined to score zero goals in 40 games. Is that bad? That seems bad.
All right – so that’s what the Leafs got. A swing and a miss, no doubt. We’ve discussed this though. These players battled injuries and terrible luck. What can you do? Unfortunately for the Leafs, that doesn’t bring the cost down.
Speaking of the cost…
The Leafs traded away one roster player (McCauley), three prospects (Boyes, Kondratiev, Immonen), and eight draft picks combined at those trade deadlines. Draft picks are used to draft hockey players, so that’s 12 players. How did those players fair in the regular season throughout their NHL careers?
NOTE: I actually ran out of room so two players are missing. There’s Kondratiev (33 games, one goal, two assists, three points) and Immonen (20 games, three goals, five assists, eight points).
So our new total is…
2,588 games.
317 goals.
453 assists.
790 points.
Now you start to see the enormous cost going “all in” at the deadline can have.
You could easily scoff at all this. You could say, “If the Leafs had just kept those draft picks they wouldn’t have been any better in those years they were Cup contenders.”
You might also ask, “Who’s to say that if the Leafs had kept those picks that they would have drafted those players?”
That’s a fair question. To that I would say that the Leafs might have drafted those same players. They might have drafted less successful players. They might have drafted much more successful players. We’ll never know. That’s why I just went with the players selected with their traded draft picks.
What’s scary about how enormous the cost appears, is this list doesn’t really have any stars on it. Who’s the best player on this list? It seems like Boyes in a walk. And they still combined for over 2,500 games played and almost 800 points. A few of them are actually still in the NHL.
Is it all worth it? Is a dozen games from a few aging stars worth more than 2,500 games and almost 800 points from other contributors? Even if you aren’t guaranteed a Cup or even a birth in the third round? It’s easy to say no from our hypothetical thrones but if the Leafs had paid double what they did and won the Cup, statues of that team and its management group would be erected all over the Greater Toronto Area like those Mel Lastman moose things.
For the sake of fairness, let’s look at how those players have performed in the playoffs.
Huh. As it turns out, it’s really hard to make it to the playoffs, and even if you do, it’s really hard to score in the playoffs. Kondratiev and Immonen never played past the regular season.
This isn’t to say that teams shouldn’t go out and be big spenders or that buying at the trade deadline is bad. I’m just trying to show you what all those draft picks and magic beans your favourite team parts ways with turn into over time.
With the salary cap, odds are you’re not going to see deadlines like the Leafs had in the early aughts. It just seems like a fun time to revisit the last time the Leafs were true buyers at the trade deadline over a decade ago.
That and I didn’t feel like writing a whole article on the Ryan O’Byrne trade.
[relatedlinks]