NHL history: Worst trade in each team’s history: Vancouver Canucks
How does a trade back in 1985 lead to the Boston Bruins draft Milan Lucic two decades later? This one really hurt the Canucks, but the trade tree is absolutely fascinating. The Bruins got a magnificent player in Cam Neely, who played 10 seasons in Boston and even added two 50-goal seasons. Neely alone for Barry Pederson would have been a bad trade.
Pederson had a fine first two years in Vancouver, but he fell off a cliff in his 28-year-old season and the Canucks eventually traded him. The year the Canucks traded him to the Kings, Neely had a career-high 92 points.
The Bruins took Glen Wesley with the 1st-round pick in the trade. He would play seven years with the Bruins before they traded him to the Hartford Whalers for three 1st-round picks. It was a massive deal that would pay dividends to the Bruins for decades. They traded two of the players selected with those 1st-round picks for other 1st-round picks. They also got a 2nd-round pick for Sergei Samsonov which was eventually used to take Milan Lucic.
So, just a quick look at all the trades, the Bruins have had Lucic, Neely, Martin Jones, Collin Miller, Sean Kuraly, Trent Frederic, Jakub Zboril, Nathan Hornton, and Gregory Campbell all for Barry Pederson. Maybe if the Canucks just kept their assets, they could have changed fortunes. Instead, Neely watched from the front office while the Bruins took the Canucks best shot at the Stanley Cup away from them.