[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.