NHL history: Worst trade in each team’s history: Florida Panthers
We haven’t heard anyone suggesting that the Florida Panthers be moved to the first city that will have them in a long time. That’s because the team has been very good as of late. They made the playoffs this season with more points than the eventual Stanley Cup Champion Tampa Bay Lightning. They have stars in Aleksander Barkov and Jonathan Huberdeau, and the team looks to be on the up and up. This could have been their reality for years if they just held onto Roberto Luongo.
At first, it looked like the Canucks traded a lot to get Luongo. Todd Bertuzzi was a very popular player at one point, but an on-ice incident changed everything. We’ll get to that in a minute. Alex Auld was a promising goalie prospect, but he never really lived up to the expectation. Bryan Allen was fine.
Bertuzzi needed to leave Vancouver because the awful Steve Moore incident would always live over his head while he was there. It should have. He almost killed a guy on the ice. The Panthers signed up for that controversy, and Bertuzzi only ended up playing seven games for the Panthers because of injuries derailing his season.
Meanwhile, Luongo went on to become the best goalie in the league. He’s the best goalie in Canucks history, and it’s either him or Henrik Lundqvist as the best goalie of this era. They were great, and the Canucks didn’t really lose anything in the trade. It’s one thing to have a contract dispute with a player, but it’s another to get no draft picks in a deal and settle for depressed assets.