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What was the best trade in Devils history?


Devilsfan118

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i mean, can there be any doubt it's the kovalchuk trade?

perhaps neal broten for corey millen now that i think about it. but that required broten to get incredibly hot after coming to NJ and carrying that through the playoffs.

i keep adding. i'm tempted to add Arnott for Zelepukin and Guerin but that was Billy was a pretty substantial player then and for years after.

Edited by sundstrom
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i mean, can there be any doubt it's the kovalchuk trade?

perhaps neal broten for corey millen now that i think about it. but that required broten to get incredibly hot after coming to NJ and carrying that through the playoffs.

Tom Kurvers for Nieds still deserves to be in the discussion, though technically Nieds was a pick :P

But yeah obviously the Kovy trade became a good one because he re-signed. If he didn't, people would have treated it as another Doug Gilmour trade (although we didn't give up a Sullivan in this deal either).

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Wow, there so many great Devil trades that built this franchise. These are the best in my opinions as they set the stage for Championships:

Sean Burke and Eric Weinrich for Bobby Holik and two draft picks.

Sylvian Turgeon for Claude Lemieux

Tom Kurvers for what turned out to be Scott Niedermayer

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i mean, can there be any doubt it's the kovalchuk trade?

Seriously? That trade was just for two months of Kovalchuk and the team didn't really properly incorporate him at all for those two months. It was a good trade and decent risk taken by the team but there's no way that's the best trade.

Kurvers for Toronto's First Rounder (Nieds) is no. 1.

Edited by halfsharkalligatorhalfman
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i mean, can there be any doubt it's the kovalchuk trade?

perhaps neal broten for corey millen now that i think about it. but that required broten to get incredibly hot after coming to NJ and carrying that through the playoffs.

i keep adding. i'm tempted to add Arnott for Zelepukin and Guerin but that was Billy was a pretty substantial player then and for years after.

I was sooo bummed when Guerin and Zelepukin got traded. They were two of my favorites. I can vividly recall the next Devils game's TV pregame show showing them packing up their stuff and leaving (I reminisced about it in one of the threads in here only a year or two ago). But, yes, Arnott would eventually win me over.

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Tom Kurvers for Nieds still deserves to be in the discussion, though technically Nieds was a pick :P

But yeah obviously the Kovy trade became a good one because he re-signed. If he didn't, people would have treated it as another Doug Gilmour trade (although we didn't give up a Sullivan in this deal either).

If its done in retrospect, then Kurvers for Toronto 1st round pick has to be the best.

yeah, the kurvers for toronto 1st was really remarkable. i was curious if toronto was a doormat for the years around that where that pick could be expected to be pretty high and they kind of were.

had kovy not resigned, it would simply be a good deal, not a great one because the devils didn't get the best of him until last year. but the point is they gave up oduya (which at the time was actually a good thing) and absolutely nothing else of importance.

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I was sooo bummed when Guerin and Zelepukin got traded. They were two of my favorites. I can vividly recall the next Devils game's TV pregame show showing them packing up their stuff and leaving (I reminisced about it in one of the threads in here only a year or two ago). But, yes, Arnott would eventually win me over.

Guerin was an a#$hole who pretty much banished himself. Arnott seemed to be the final piece of the puzzle for what was potentially the greatest Devil line-up of all time (although we didn't win the cup in 2001).

Kurvers for Toronto's first and it isn't even close. It has gone down as the WORST trade in the history of the Maple Leafs, which tells you what a fleecing it was.

Hands down the greatest Devil trade ever.

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yeah, the kurvers for toronto 1st was really remarkable. i was curious if toronto was a doormat for the years around that where that pick could be expected to be pretty high and they kind of were.

had kovy not resigned, it would simply be a good deal, not a great one because the devils didn't get the best of him until last year. but the point is they gave up oduya (which at the time was actually a good thing) and absolutely nothing else of importance.

The first rounder wasn't nothing. Although the 2nd round swap landed us Merrill. If he turns out to be even a good second pairing defenseman that's another huge win.

Toronto was a playoff team the year before with a .500 record. They had to have expected to improve with the trade considering that Lindros was available in the same draft. The Leafs have bungled a lot of things in their glorious history, but they couldn't have been that stupid to part with a first rounder if they believed they had even a remote shot at the number 1 pick that year, although it almost came to that.

Edited by Daniel
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As much as I hated it at the time, Arnott and McKay and a 1st for Langenbrunner and Nieuwendyk.

Also, Sykora for Tverdovsky and Friesen ended up being huge.

with the first one, they still gave a lot in that arnott was good for plenty of years after.

tverdovsky wasn't all that good but friesen obviously had that tremendous playoff run in '03. and sykora still was a pretty useful player for the ducks and after.

my point was looking for a deal where the devils won the most - meaning that while they got a ton out of the guy they got, the ones going the other way were not good or flat out bad.

the kurvers for #1 pick doesn't look like an all time heist if it's pat falloon but the point is clear.

the point i meant w/ kovy is that, in the end, the thrashers/jets got a couple years of a mid pairing defenseman in oduya and nothing of any value beyond dreamland (cormier). the devils got kovalchuk and they will have him for the rest of his NHL career.

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yeah, the kurvers for toronto 1st was really remarkable. i was curious if toronto was a doormat for the years around that where that pick could be expected to be pretty high and they kind of were.

Toronto thought they were going to be not bad and that they needed to keep adding good players to avoid missing the playoffs again. They went from 3rd worst record in the league they year before Kurvers, to 12th best record with Kurvers, and then back to 2nd worst record the year after. Everyone had subpar seasons for Toronto in the Nieds draft season. They rolled over almost half the roster they were so fed up with the underperofrming and didn't want to be the team that gave away Lindros.

If San Jose hadn't entered the league that season, for the draft, the Devils would have taken Pat Falloon and the Isles and Winnipeg would have gotten Niedermayer and Lachance in some order.

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had kovy not resigned, it would simply be a good deal, not a great one because the devils didn't get the best of him until last year.

I don't consider his re-signing as part of the trade since he went UFA and the Devils apparently blew every other team and the KHL out of the water in terms of money / years. I guess you could make an argument that

1. Kovy maybe re-signs with another team if Devils don't make the trade

2. Devils don't feel comfortable giving him big money without seeing him in the organization for 2 months.

But then it's certainly not clear that it was even a good trade. Kovalchuk's contract could very well be a horrible mistake still, a lot of time left, and the majority of the money still to be paid...

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Worse than Tyler Seguin and another two high picks for Phil Kessel? :lol:

it depends. kessel is a very good player. tom kurvers gave toronto a couple good years (stats wise) and was shipped out two years later.

again, it's bad because the devils took neidermayer. had sj taken him, the devils were either taking falloon or lachance - both of which would likely be footnotes in devils history. (and for those that go and look, no they were not going to take forsberg. it has since been reported that the devils really didn't think they'd get neidermayer because they assumed SJ was going to take him and were split between lachance and falloon.

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Worse than Tyler Seguin and another two high picks for Phil Kessel? :lol:

If Seguin turns into a Hall of Famer and four-time cup champions, or something close to that, then maybe. Also, for all his warts, Kessel is a very good player, and probably as good as Seguin is right now. Kurvers, you could compare to Paul Martin. More points than Martin, but did so at the tail end of the live-puck era.

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I don't consider his re-signing as part of the trade since he went UFA and the Devils apparently blew every other team and the KHL out of the water in terms of money / years. I guess you could make an argument that

that is fair but like i've been saying, i'm not looking at it for just what the devils got including the contracts at the time. i'm looking at it from long term assets after the deal was done (but not in the way of what did that player eventually get us - meaning i'm not going to say trading for jason arnott was so good because he eventually got us langenbrunner and neiuwendyk).

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Guerin was an a#$hole who pretty much banished himself. Arnott seemed to be the final piece of the puzzle for what was potentially the greatest Devil line-up of all time (although we didn't win the cup in 2001).

I had been a fan of Guerin from before he had his issues with the team. That's how it is sometimes, fans get emotionally invested in players early on and then occasionally things happen and it doesn't work out.

And Zelepukin, well who didn't like him.

Edited by 95Crash
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It clearly won't go down as the best, but the Bryce Salvador for Cam Jansen trade is always one of the first that comes to mind when this topic is brought up. It still feels like some form or robbery to me.

based on my criteria (eventual most for eventual least), this is actually might be the best trade lou ever made. good thought by you.

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Great thread. Haven't read through it all yet, but there are some great trades to choose from. Kurvers to Toronto for their 1st that turned out to be Nieds is my personal favorite, but the Kovy trade is certainly in the discussion. How about Troy Crowder for Randy McKay? That was a great deal too.

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