In sports, not every trade works. Not every trade is spun gold. And that being the case, being a successful general manager means having to have a short memory. Fans do not have that burden. They remember, especially the bad trades, sometimes to the point of obsessive discomfort. And sometimes, fans place too much burden on thoughts of “what might have been” with respect to trades.
That brings us to June 13, 1987. It was the day of the annual entry draft,
this one being held at Joe Louis Arena in Detroit, Michigan. The Capitals had other issues to deal with,
in addition to their draft picks.
Goaltender Bob Mason, who was coming off a 20-win season for the Caps
(but an unfortunate finish), informed the club that he would not be returning to the team and signed with
the Chicago Blackhawks as a free agent.
It left a hole in net for the club, and the front office addressed the
matter by making a trade with the Quebec Nordiques.
The trade seemed simple enough, if hugely significant
concerning the players involved. It was
a two-for-two swap of roster players, forwards Alan Haworth and Gaetan Duchesne
going to Quebec, and goalie Clint Malarchuk and forward Dale Hunter coming to
Washington. And, it involved players in
their prime, none of them older than 26 (Hunter was the oldest, less than two
months short of his 27th birthday).
But it was the non-roster player part of the trade that
would take on significance in Capitals lore as the years went by. The Capitals also sent their first round pick
in the 1987 entry draft to the Nordiques in the deal. With that pick, the 15th pick of
the first round, the Nordiques selected a center from the Swift Current Broncos
of the Western Hockey League, Joe Sakic.
One might not have foreseen it at the time, but Sakic would have one of
the legendary careers in NHL history and was arguably the most accomplished
player in that 1987 draft class. Of his
1987 cohort, Sakic ranks fourth in career games played (1,378), second in goals
(625), first in assists (1,016), first in points (1,641). He won the Hart
Trophy (most valuable player) and Pearson Award (now the Ted Lindsay Award as
most outstanding player) in 2000-2001.
He was named to the All-Star Game 12 times and was a first team NHL All
Star three times. Sakic appeared in the
postseason 13 times in his 20-year career, playing in 172 games, scoring 84
goals (seventh in NHL history), posting 188 points (ninth), recording 19
game-winning goals (tied for third), and won the Stanley Cup twice (he was the
Conn Smythe winner as MVP of the postseason in 1996).
Although Dale Hunter’s career is remembered fondly by most
Capitals fans (even as his style of play would not suggest “fondness”), many of
those same Capitals fans might ask themselves, “what if?” What if the Caps had held the pick and taken
Sakic? Would their arc of history been
different?
Considering those questions, we are still left with the Caps
having the matter of shoring up their goaltending. Pete Peeters would have been the only
returning goaltender (the Caps traded Al Jensen to the Los Angeles Kings
earlier in the 1996-1987 season). And it
was not as if the Caps were deep at the position in their system. If you look at their draft picks at the
position in the five drafts leading up to 1987 (Jim Holden, Jamie Reeve, Alain
Raymond, Marty Abrams, Jim Hrivnak, and Shawn Simpson), there were no apparent
sure-fire pros in that group. Raymond
(one game) and Hrivnak (85 games) would be the only ones ever to dress in the
NHL. Clearly, there was work that would
have remained at the position on the parent roster.
But perhaps more important, there was the matter of the
Caps’ draft history that renders such “what if” speculation irrelevant in
hindsight. This was not the golden age
of Capitals’ draft choices, especially in the first round. The Caps hit home runs with first round picks
in 1981 (Bobby Carpenter) and in 1982 (Scott Stevens), but then the dark time
set in. From 1983 through 1990, their
first round draft history of skaters was as follows:
- 1983: No pick
- 1984: Kevin Hatcher
- 1985: Yvon Corriveau
- 1986: Jeff Greenlaw
- 1987: No pick (this was the pick traded to Quebec that was used by the Nordiques to take Sakic)
- 1988: Reggie Savage
- 1989: No pick (they took goalie Olaf Kolzig in the first round)
- 1990: John Slaney
That group played a combined 1,796 regular season games in
their respective NHL careers, but 1,157 of them were accounted for by
Hatcher. The five combined for 964 games
played for the Caps, 685 of those by Hatcher.
It would be reasonable to wonder, even if the Capitals were
inclined to take a forward, one out of the Western Hockey League, even one from
the Swift Current Broncos, whether that player would have been Joe Sakic, of whom it was said at the time, “he doesn’t have much quickness,” and “usually, a
player of this calibre would be certain to go in the top five. The reason he
probably won't is his size and average skating ability."
Or, would the Caps have gone for a teammate of Sakic’s, one of whom it was
said, “he is a good skater, has a great shot and is described as a dependable
and good positional player, " and “[he is] strong”, and who himself
recorded 31 goals in 52 games in the 1986-1987 season with Swift Current after
arriving from the Kamloops Blazers in a trade?
Would the Caps have taken Peter Soberlak, who would be taken
with the 21st overall pick in the 1987 entry draft by Edmonton? Soberlak never played in an NHL game.
The choices made in real time are rarely an either-or
proposition. Those are the luxuries of
hindsight.