Monday Morning Mock Draft: Makin’ Some Changes

Good morning, and happy start of the work week to you. In order to ensure that your week gets off to a flying stop, I’ve got what I think is a decent topic for you. This week we’re taking one thing, (at a time), that you’d have a team undo. All you have to pick is what they’re not going to do. Bonus points if you have an alternative, but it’s not necessary. You can undo anything: a trade, a draft pick, a response to a sexual harassment charge, (glares in Redsk…uh, Commanders), a franchise move. if you didn’t like the move, you pick it. The only limit I’ll put on it is that it can’t be an in-game move, mostly because it just occurred to me that we could do a whole separate draft on that.

For me, my first pick is an easy one: The Hartford Whalers 1991 trade of Ron Francis, Ulf Samuelson, and Grant Jenning to the Pittsburgh Penguins for John Cullen, (shortly after fans would be yelling “Rent, don’t buy” at Cullen as he stunk up the Civic Center), Zarley Zalapski, and something called Jeff Parker.

For years I’ve blamed then Whalers GM Eddie Johnston for this trade, especially because Johnston later went back and coached the subsequently thriving Penguins. Doing a (very) little “research” for this draft, however, it seems that the fault lies with then Whalers owner Richard Gordon who, frustrated by stalled negotiations with Francis, (making the princely sum of $370,000, which I initially thought was missing a comma and a zero but nope, hockey players just don’t make much compared to other sports), supposedly told Johnston “if he is her on Monday you guys won’t be here. Get Ronny out of here.” Also the then coach of the Whalers, Rick Ley, apparently didn’t like Francis, or much of anyone else. I do recall Ley having the reputation of being a prick, and he was definitely a shit coach.

The result of that trade was two Stanley Cups for Pittsburgh and pretty much the death knell of hockey in Hartford. It turns out that trading your most popular player, and one who would eventually become the third all-time leading scorer in NHL history, (currently 5th) for a guy who couldn’t score without Mario Lemieux isn’t the franchise establishing move you might think.

My suggested alternative is “don’t do it”, maybe fire Rick Ley while you’re at it, and don’t sell the team to Peter Karmanos in 1994. You can’t trust that fucking guy.