What was the worst trade in Flames history?

[FireGilbert]

There are too many to count

Number 1 and 2 are easily Savard and Gilmour.

Some others coming to mind are Hull, Mullen, MacInnis, Vernon, Stralman, Phanuef, Jokinen, Regehr, Iginla and Bouwmeester.

[the-rasta-masta]

I'd have to think it was the Savard trade in terms of the response of most of who remember paying close attention to the team at the time. That was kind of a "What, that's all we got for him?" deal. We had a skilled young center who had put up 45, 53 and 65 point seasons in his his first three full seasons in the NHL. The whole Gilbert/Savard circus was so ridiculous in the first place and then they are both gone within a very short while of each other. It was incredibly short sighted, and we knew immediately we had lost that trade.

It only got worse after the fact. The guy was putting up near 100 points seasons in some of Iginla's prime years. It was obvious Zainullun or however you spell it was a real hope and a prayer to us right of the get-go. But hey, we must still own his rights? Maybe we should throw him into the prospect rankings! Zainullin jihad?

[Jacks]

The Gilmour trade hands down. It wasn't so bad that he was traded, because he probably didn't want to be here. We traded a top player in the league (future hall of famer) in his prime, a solid top 3 defenceman in Macoun, a solid back up goalie who knew his role and filled it beautifully in Wamsley and a couple of roster players for a steaming pile of manure.

[Bonecrushing Hits]

The Gilmour trade was easily the worst, but while I realize this is the minority opinion, I would argue the Hull trade was right there with it.The historical narrative is that we won the cup because of that trade, I maintain we won the cup in spite of it. Yes they contributed, but seriously a back up goalie and number 4/5 d-man wasn't make or break that year. We were frickin' stacked.

Fletcher at the time admitted he knew what he was giving up... I think we could have more cup banners in the rafters had we not done it.

[locsofblu]

Gilmore Trade. But there were some other bad ones as well.

[monkeyman]

Originally Posted by Mister Yamoto

Sutter won just about every trade he made excluding the six months where he lost his marbles.

Fletcher
Sutter
Coates
Button



Risebrough
Feaster

The book on Treliving hasn't been wrote yet but so far I'm impressed.

Yikes. Risebrough was responsible for trading away Makarov, Vernon, MacInnis, Suter, Gilmour, and lesser, but important pieces like Ranheim and Macoun, all for junk. It left this organization a mess for years and years. It's the only reason I give Coates a pass, because he had nothing to work with after that.
Feaster was left holding a bag of crap that Sutter left and is responsible for some of the key pieces of the current roster and prospect pool.

Fletcher
Sutter
Feaster
Coates
Button







Risebrough

[PaperBagger'14]

Fotze for Par

[EldrickOnIce]

^ you judge a GM on his trades and signings, not the team's drafting, imo. So who valuable is Feaster responsible for on this roster?

[CalgaryFan1988]

Originally Posted by locsofblu

Gilmore Trade. But there were some other bad ones as well.

Happy was never a Flame.

[Flames Draft Watcher]

Wasn't following the Flames before the Al Coates era so I'll go on the history I know. And based on the last 20 years IMO the worst few are:

Savard for Zainullin. Just a braindead move by Button. One of many blunders he made.

Giguere for a 2nd (just before Giguere FINALLY blossomed into an NHL goalie.) Button protected Fred Brathwaite over Giguere in a series of complete blunders at the beginning of his tenure after the Al Coates firing.

Stralman for a 3rd. Acquire a promising young defenseman while dumping Primeau's contract and then we don't even given the defenseman a chance to develop and instead keep some horrible vets. Blech, the kind of backwards thinking that really did Sutter in.

Phaneuf for a bunch of mediocre stuff. Frankly he should've been traded the summer we signed Bouwmeester in order to fix the salaries on the defense. Pretty sure at that time you could've traded him to a variety of teams for significantly more. Another Sutter head scratcher. Timing was absolutely brutal. Should've traded him during an offseason.

Jokinen for Kotalik/Higgins. Paid a ton for Jokinen and then just gave him away for a guy that became a cap burden and a guy who didn't want to re-sign here and promptly left. Just another disastrous Sutter move. Kotalik wasn't even a Darryl Sutter type player. The deal just reeked of desperation.

I loved Sutter when he was the GM/Coach but as soon as he stopped coaching he started acquiring non-Sutter type players and making all sorts of really stupid moves. Turns out he had to be in the dressing room and coaching against players to know which guys to keep and acquire because as soon as he stopped coaching his trading touch went down the drain.

Jay Bouwmeester for a 1st, Berra and Cundari. Just pathetic return on a guy who was regularly making Olympic teams. He wasn't a pending UFA. He would've likely garnered a lot more if traded during an offseason. Somehow he returned less than Travis Hamonic did even though IMO he was much more highly thought of league wide. If you're trading a top pairing dman with a year left on his contract you better be getting multiple 1sts or a top prospect + 1st at minimum. Pretty bad blunder by Feaster on this one IMO. Luckily Burke somehow salvaged Berra into a 2nd rounder (miracle trade) to make this trade slightly more palatable but overall the Feaster deals for Iginla and Bouwmeester were embarrassingly bad. Luckily we drafted well at the top end of the 1st and got a bit lucky IMO in multiple drafts or our rebuild would've been a lot more painful.

HM: Iginla trade. Honorable mention goes out to the owners on this one as Iginla should've been traded a year or two earlier to actually salvage good value on him and start the rebuild off with some premium assets. Feaster wasn't intellectually honest enough to start the rebuild when we should have. He was basically forced into it by building such a crap team around an aging Iginla.

[Mean Mr. Mustard]

Originally Posted by CalgaryFan1988

No, but a dime and two pennies is worth more than a nickel.

In this instance though is Stajan really considered a dime. He is a third/fourth line player who is good in the locker room by all accounts. Sure he is the last of the pieces in the trade and Phaneuf never materialized into the defender that he looked like he was going to be in 2006 but the Flames didn't maximize their asset and trade him for mediocrity.

[locsofblu]

Originally Posted by CalgaryFan1988

Happy was never a Flame.

We'll he damn well should have been lol.

[Mister Yamoto]

Originally Posted by monkeyman

Yikes. Risebrough was responsible for trading away Makarov, Vernon, MacInnis, Suter, Gilmour, and lesser, but important pieces like Ranheim and Macoun, all for junk. It left this organization a mess for years and years. It's the only reason I give Coates a pass, because he had nothing to work with after that.
Feaster was left holding a bag of crap that Sutter left and is responsible for some of the key pieces of the current roster and prospect pool.

Fletcher
Sutter
Feaster
Coates
Button







Risebrough

Button never gets the credit he deserves for the 04 run. 03 was the Flames best trade deadline ever IMO. He would still be a GM today if only he was able to pick goalies ..............or coaches.

There are a lot of reasons why Jay Feaster is the worst Flames GM.When he first started, and the plan was to stay competitive he failed.When it was time to tear it down and rebuild he failed.

The whole core of that team, Iginla, Kiprusoff, Regehr, Bouwmeester, Langkow, Jokinen, Tanguay, Sarich, Bourque he was able to flip for .............virtually nothing. I was just looking at his trade history. Embarrassing. His trades range from terrible to meh. One good trade. Erixon for Horak and two 2nds. (Mcgratton for Piskula worked better for me though)

His drafting/developing is greatly over rated by this board. He drafted Monahan. Great. How did they get 6OA? By sewering a season. And he tried to trade that pick at least twice.

He was so insecure that he often made roster moves purely based on optics. Only very special players go from the CHL directly to the NHL. Apparently Roman Horak is one of those special players. He sure loved to pat himself on the back for that. During the Feaster era STH meetings seemed like spending an hour with a used car salesman.

But what really makes him even worse than Risebrough is all of the embarrassment he caused for the team and its fans. The "ROR fiasco". Remember when he said that letting Jokinen walk was no big deal because he signed the best centerman not in the NHL, Roman Cervenka. And then it came out that Cervenka hadn't played center in years. The way the Iginla trade played out. The whole league was laughing at us. And they had good reason to. Most of my Flames stuff stayed in my closet for a couple of years. One positive for me is that I fell in love with the Roughnecks during the Feaster years.

He made some nice moves. Hartley, Hudler, Gaudreau. His best move IMO was letting Treliving assume a roster without many bad contracts.

Doug Risebrough and Jay Feaster were both terrible Flames GMs. However Doug Risebrough never once made me embarrassed to be a Flames fan. Jay Feaster did. And I am so glad he is gone.

[Flames Draft Watcher]

OMG I forgot Regehr (who I loved) + Kotalik for Byron + 2nd. We would've been far better keeping Regehr and dealing Sarich who was only making slightly less and was a far inferior defenseman. Regehr was later traded as a pending UFA for even more than Feaster got for him! Embarrassing and it really eroded the quality of our defense and set our organization back. Regehr was traded to try and make a run at Brad Richards who was later bought out of that contract. Meanwhile Sarich was the real cap problem, not Regehr. Imagine if we had actually landed Brad Richards. How much would that have cost us long term? YIKES.

My god was Feaster bad at the whole trading thing. Squandered assets left and right. Lets not forget he's the man reasonable for the length of the Wideman deal as well. That sure handicapped us the past year or two and the cost of the handicap was not worth the couple good years we got out of him. People credit Feaster for not saddling us with bad contracts but he was offering Brad Richards 7+ million and gave Wideman 5.5. He kept Sarich over Regehr. He's overrated by far in that area.

Feaster made very, very few good moves his entire tenure. Hudler was one of the only good moves he ever made. Credit for Gaudreau really needs to go to Tod Button and the scouts. I mean he did let them do their job without the biases Sutter had imposed on them but does he really get a lot of credit for empowering his scouts? Shouldn't that kind of be a given as a GM? The best thing Feaster did was let the scouts do their job? How bad does that make him?

As bad as some of Sutter's deals were he did also have some real gold. Button also made some good moves after his initial disastrous 1st year. Whereas Feaster was just godawful overall. That man gets way too much credit on this board. He squandered some of the best assets we had into a couple 1sts, 2nds and busts. Good riddance to that man, he was an embarrassment. His trades were an embarrassment. His press conferences were an embarrassment (intellectual honesty, fool me once, fool me twice) right before he got fooled yet again. Feaster is clearly the worst GM we had in my time of following the team the past 20 years.

The difference in capability from Feaster to Treliving is enormous. We went from a mostly incompetent GM who was actually quoted as saying he didn't try to win trades to probably the most savvy GM we've had in my 20 years of following the team. It's a good time to be a Flames fan. Thankfully the owners found and trusted a hockey man in Burke to do an organizational review. And thank Burke that he found Treliving. We're in great hands now, not worried one bit about the direction of the team.

[Eric Vail]

I'd agree with most on here that the Gilmore trade was the worst.

I find it difficult to believe that no one has brought up the Steve Tambelini trade. That set us back tremendously. That is one of Cliff's worst, along with Mullen. Though I cut him some slack because of all the great trades and draft picks he made.

If you have to go to hockeydb to get the particulars, you don't understand it.

[monkeyman]

Originally Posted by Mister Yamoto

Button never gets the credit he deserves for the 04 run. 03 was the Flames best trade deadline ever IMO. He would still be a GM today if only he was able to pick goalies ..............or coaches.

There are a lot of reasons why Jay Feaster is the worst Flames GM.When he first started, and the plan was to stay competitive he failed.When it was time to tear it down and rebuild he failed.

The whole core of that team, Iginla, Kiprusoff, Regehr, Bouwmeester, Langkow, Jokinen, Tanguay, Sarich, Bourque he was able to flip for .............virtually nothing. I was just looking at his trade history. Embarrassing. His trades range from terrible to meh. One good trade. Erixon for Horak and two 2nds. (Mcgratton for Piskula worked better for me though)

His drafting/developing is greatly over rated by this board. He drafted Monahan. Great. How did they get 6OA? By sewering a season. And he tried to trade that pick at least twice.

He was so insecure that he often made roster moves purely based on optics. Only very special players go from the CHL directly to the NHL. Apparently Roman Horak is one of those special players. He sure loved to pat himself on the back for that. During the Feaster era STH meetings seemed like spending an hour with a used car salesman.

But what really makes him even worse than Risebrough is all of the embarrassment he caused for the team and its fans. The "ROR fiasco". Remember when he said that letting Jokinen walk was no big deal because he signed the best centerman not in the NHL, Roman Cervenka. And then it came out that Cervenka hadn't played center in years. The way the Iginla trade played out. The whole league was laughing at us. And they had good reason to. Most of my Flames stuff stayed in my closet for a couple of years. One positive for me is that I fell in love with the Roughnecks during the Feaster years.

He made some nice moves. Hartley, Hudler, Gaudreau. His best move IMO was letting Treliving assume a roster without many bad contracts.

Doug Risebrough and Jay Feaster were both terrible Flames GMs. However Doug Risebrough never once made me embarrassed to be a Flames fan. Jay Feaster did. And I am so glad he is gone.

Button's handling of Savard is reason enough to rate him below Feaster.
As for Risebrough, honestly, how could anyone not be embarrassed with trade after trade of hall of famers and all stars, all for peanuts, followed by the epic fail of the young guns era. Not to mention his piss poor drafting recored. Sad sad time to be a Flames fan. FYI, we were the laughing stalk of the entire NHL over that period of time. Hell, fans still look back and laugh at us because of those trades.
Feaster was given his mandate by ownership and saddled by large unmovable contracts by Sutter. Cervenka wasn't a bad signing, he was hampered by the lockout and his injury. As for ROR, you couldn't possible know how that would've turned out, it's a non-issue. Feaster was also saddled with a NMC in the Iginla contract, you could argue it was whoever gave him that clause and Iginla who were responsible for how that trade turned out. Kipper refused to be traded, again, you could argue it was whoever saddled Feaster with the terms of that and Kipper who are responsible. Langkow, Jokinen, Tanguay, were all pretty much done by the time they were traded. Langkow played one subpar season and Tanguay and Jokinen bounced around for two or three subpar sessions before retiring. I don't know what you'd expect to get for any of those guys.
Bowmester was a bit of a fail, but he played like crap here in Calgary. Regehr was a fail, but not on the same level as anything Risebrough had or Button with Savard IMO.

[Mister Yamoto]

Originally Posted by Eric Vail

I'd agree with most on here that the Gilmore trade was the worst.

I find it difficult to believe that no one has brought up the Steve Tambelini trade. That set us back tremendously. That is one of Cliff's worst, along with Mullen. Though I cut him some slack because of all the great trades and draft picks he made.

If you have to go to hockeydb to get the particulars, you don't understand it.

For the real early days Don Edwards was a real stinker. He was the Vezina winner who was supposed to put the Flames over the top but all he did was have a couple of underwhelming months and then break his leg. I can't remember for sure, but I think he broke his leg playing an exhibition game against the Red Army.

And Eric Vail For Gary Mcadam? C'mon Cliff.

[monkeyman]

Originally Posted by EldrickOnIce

^ you judge a GM on his trades and signings, not the team's drafting, imo. So who valuable is Feaster responsible for on this roster?

Ultimately the GM is responsible for trades, signing and drafting. Treliving himself credited Feaster with putting several pieces into place. so if you don't believe me, maybe you'll believe him?
Also, do you think JG would've been drafted if Sutter were still the GM?

[Mister Yamoto]

Originally Posted by monkeyman

Feaster was given his mandate by ownership and saddled by large unmovable contracts by Sutter. Cervenka wasn't a bad signing, he was hampered by the lockout and his injury. As for ROR, you couldn't possible know how that would've turned out, it's a non-issue. Feaster was also saddled with a NMC in the Iginla contract, you could argue it was whoever gave him that clause and Iginla who were responsible for how that trade turned out. Kipper refused to be traded, again, you could argue it was whoever saddled Feaster with the terms of that and Kipper who are responsible. Langkow, Jokinen, Tanguay, were all pretty much done by the time they were traded. Langkow played one subpar season and Tanguay and Jokinen bounced around for two or three subpar sessions before retiring. I don't know what you'd expect to get for any of those guys.
Bowmester was a bit of a fail, but he played like crap here in Calgary. Regehr was a fail, but not on the same level as anything Risebrough had or Button with Savard IMO.

Good gawd. The Flames opening night roster in 2013 featured 8 left wingers, 6 D who shoot left and a goalie tandem that came straight from Euro leagues. THE GUY HAD NO CLUE HOW TO BUILD AN NHL TEAM.

And I could go on and on about him but I think I made my point. Forget about worst Flames GM. If you include his Tampa Bay years he's right there with Kevin Lowe for worst GM of the new millenium.

[monkeyman]

Originally Posted by Mister Yamoto

Good gawd. The Flames opening night roster in 2013 featured 8 left wingers, 6 D who shoot left and a goalie tandem that came straight from Euro leagues. THE GUY HAD NO CLUE HOW TO BUILD AN NHL TEAM.

And I could go on and on about him but I think I made my point. Forget about worst Flames GM. If you include his Tampa Bay years he's right there with Kevin Lowe for worst GM of the new millenium.

you mean where he won a cup and did such a poor job they hired back into the front office?
It's clear, we're never going to agree. I don't think Fester gets nearly enough credit and I don't know how you could rate him lower than the guy responsible for sending this team into 7 years of non-playoff hockey.
And I could go on and on about just how bad those teams were.
I should also add, 2013 was the first year of a rebuild, the team made the playoffs the year after, you think Feaster had nothing to do with that success? As I previously stated, Treliving himself acknowledged Feaster for that.