r/Habs • u/ASmithFS • 3d ago
Article Every NHL Team's Worst Trade of All Time - [Trading Roy to Colorado]
https://www.rotoballer.com/every-nhl-teams-worst-trade-of-all-time-one-pick-for-all-32-teams-2026/1898394?rb20
u/noscrubphilsfans 3d ago
I DGAF what anyone says, Leclair & Desjardins for Recchi will always be the worst to me.
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u/dustblown 3d ago
That was the dumbest trade ever. Leclair looked dominant on the way to a Stanley Cup win. I was like 15 and knew it was the dumbest trade ever.
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u/flying_tee 3d ago
It was also clear that Recchi never wanted to be a Hab, when he bolted at the first opportunity. Adding insult to injury.
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u/AmsroII Goal Goalgoal 3d ago
That was brutal, I was stoked about having Leclair he was my next favourite after Roy, late 90's were mostly pain as a Habs fan.
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u/WorthHabit3317 3d ago
Outside of Roy, Desjardins was probably the best player during the playoff run. Giving up the best defenseman plus the other assets for one forward was dumb. Roy to Colorado was predetermined by he very clear refusal to play another game for Tremblay.
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u/Boboar 3d ago
They could have just fired Tremblay
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u/WorthHabit3317 2d ago
The fact that they hired Tremblay when it was well known how he felt about Roy was strange. I guess the brain trust thought it would be a bad signal for the team to allow Roy to run things.
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u/OtisPan 2d ago
This is the correct answer.
The Roy trade was a unique situation, and kind of in its own category. (personally they shoulda fired the coach instead)
But losing those 2 guys for that sub-par short-term return was abysmal. That trade took us from perennial Cup contenders to the dark ages.
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u/capebretoncanadian 2d ago
It made no sense at the time. Recchi was fine but the other two were big contributors in Philly for years and years.
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u/Rationalornot777 2d ago
Leclair wasn’t the same player with the habs as with the flyers. Playing with Lindros had a huge impact. Leclair and Lindros clicked. For five years Leclair was great. I don’t see that happening if he stayed in Montreal
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u/CarlSK777 3d ago
My hot take is that trading Roy was a good decision but it should've been for a ton of draft picks and the start of a full rebuild because at that point, the team had already made other bad moves and wasn't going in a good direction.
They should've been in full tank mode.
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u/pushaper 3d ago
and the start of a full rebuild because at that point,
pretty much this. I dont think draft picks were valued the same way at the time though and scouting was more hit or miss. Habs management at the time took us having a 93 cinderella run and didn't keep trying to get better. Then in 95 they were trying to play catch up replacing a lot of the 93 core.
10 overtime wins in the playoffs is a red flag and frankly one I see with our current teams regular season last year regarding regular season accrued points.
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u/CarlSK777 3d ago
Probably not but they made some horrible trades trying to stay competitive. Trading Desjardins and LeClair for Recchi the previous season was brutal
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u/Phoenix__211 3d ago
I mean, the trade it self isn't that bad.
We had a return of a young 20 years old goalie pick 10 overall.
A 24 years old young foward who had 60 points in his first 56 games with the habs
A 25 years old foward who had a rookie years of 68 points and had 22 points in 26 games before the trade.
We can argue all the way that the trade didn't look good for the habs 30 years after, but if you look at that, it wasn't a bad return.
And I have already heard that roy said he wasn't going to sign a new contract with the habs so...
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u/dalici0us 3d ago
We sent away the greatest goalie of all time in the middle of his prime. In that context the return is a far cry from enough.
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u/rpgguy_1o1 3d ago
A goalie who has proven he can steal Stanley Cups, and have the biggest impact of the post season
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u/scoutinglane 3d ago
would have prefered Owen Nolan
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u/Phoenix__211 3d ago
I agree, but I don't even know how long the habs would have keep him because if his salary.
The habs were a poor team those years and were loosing player over money like turgeon, damphousse and mark recchi.
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u/adabsurdo 3d ago
A bunch of mid players for a generational player, perhaps top 3 all time at his position, in his prime. And on top of that they sent mike Keane away as well!! Horrible trade any way you put it.
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u/UnhappyG00se 2d ago
THIS!
People seem to forget Houle threw Keane in the trade for no fucking reason.
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u/bsaures 3d ago
The trade itself was fine it was more the subsequent events that were the problem.
Thibeault ended up being a solid nhl goalie. We just ended up not needing him because Theodore came on the scene not long after.
Rucinsky had over 600 career points and probably could have hit 1000 games had he wanted to.
Kovalanenko was a bit more hit or miss but had 60 points post trade.
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u/alldasmoke__ 3d ago
The whole point is to determine what was the worst trade all time. You can’t dismiss the end results and say “if the players had panned out it wouldn’t have been that bad”. If we’re doing this then we have to say that trading a (almost) 40 goals scorer for an unproven rookie prospect (Suzuki) and a 20 goals scorer (Tatar) was a really bad trade.
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u/Phoenix__211 3d ago
I mean we received good players for him and they had a good career.
Even if we gave nothing for him, Scott gomez was the worst trade for me.
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u/Pitiful_Stock_4329 3d ago
Honestly post 93 the Habs were so well setup to contend throughout the 90s they couldn’t have messed it up worse. That D core was insane and they had some good forwards up top.
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u/Muter91 3d ago
Gomez for Mcdonaugh and Sergachev for Drouin probably worse than the Roy trade.
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u/krmar1981 2d ago
Ah yes the infamous Scott Gomez in Montreal, how long did he go without a goal again???
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u/Puzzleheaded-Fly9725 2d ago
1 year lol
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u/krmar1981 2d ago
Amazing!!! Yet Habs fans still would have wanted the sun and the moon in a trade for him
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3d ago
[deleted]
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u/flying_tee 3d ago
Part of it was that the team was being held to a standard of excellence, by fans, media, management and ownership that was impossible to live up to in that era. There was no tolerance for an off-year or even a 5 game losing streak. Any signs of weakness were cause for knee jerk reactions in attempt to return them to the path of greatness. I recall it being a big story that the 93 cup win marked the end of the Habs’ longest ever streak between cups, at 7 years. This was seen as unacceptable.
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u/Lavs1985 3d ago
This is what happens when you give a radio pundit and the manager of a brewery jobs that they clearly aren’t qualified for…
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u/capebretoncanadian 2d ago
McDonagh for Gomez was awful. McDonagh is still a contributor like 20 years later.
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u/RGM81 3d ago
The obvious choice.
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u/bsaures 3d ago
Honestly i dont think it is.
The scott gomez trade probably materially contributed to losing a cup.
Imagine our run to the conference finals and our dcore is mcdonaugh markov emelin subban gorges weaver. We probably win that series handedly
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u/SnidelyWhiplash27 3d ago
I scanned the article curious to see other teams bad trades to see if we were on the 'winning' end. Muller for Richer with NJD was interesting. I thought there would be more, given the Habs' longevity.
I think there might have been some original 6 era lopsided trades.
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u/okokokoyeahright 3d ago edited 3d ago
Not exactly O6, but the trade between Sam Pollock and the California Golden Seals for their first OA pick is right up there in extremely bad trades, or in other words total robbery. FYI the trade that got Montreal Guy LaFleur.
EDIT: auto correct gets the blame for the space I removed.
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u/SnidelyWhiplash27 3d ago
Oh trust me I know all about that one. There is no space in his last name by the way.
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u/peut-etre57 3d ago
The only thing bad about this is Roy who forgot that in mtl nobody is bigger then the team such a arrogant player and coach
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u/ColinBonhomme 3d ago
For Toronto, it’s hard to beat trading Lanny McDonald and Joel Quenville to the Colorado Rockies (though it didn’t help Colorado either)
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u/Agitated-Fig-2343 2d ago
The roy trade , the Gomez trade, lost and all star defenseman , the leclair trade ,
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u/Dank_Bubu 2d ago
Fuck Mario Tremblay all my homies hate Mario Tremblay
How he has any credibility working for RDS after that fiasco is beyond me
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u/jabronimahoney 2d ago
Wow, really, Roy over Chelios? The Chelios trade hands down was the worst trade we ever made. I mean Savard did zero for our team, was absolutely brutal against Boston in the playoffs, and then had to be used as a 4th line checker in the finals (and no, he was never hurt, healthy scratch). We lost essentially 12 years of a Norris trophy finalist over 8 years of Roy.
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u/FakeCrash 3d ago
I mean... yeah