Less than two weeks away from trade deadline, we saw a topic make its round on Twitter, one that we simply couldn’t ignore. According to some, the trade that sent Mikhail Sergachev to Tampa Bay and Jonathan Drouin to Montreal is up there amongst the worst trades in the history of the Montreal Canadiens, right up there with the Patrick Roy trade of 1995…
What was a worse trade for the Montreal Canadiens? McDonough for Gomez or Sergachev for Drouin? #Habs#Canadiens#NHL
— Jason Rockwell (He/Him) (@IAMRockwell) March 7, 2022
Honestly, it’s mind boggling that some people think that it ranks amongst the worst trades in history. Either it’s a gross exaggeration on their part, or it’s simply just another sign of hater towards Drouin. But don’t take my word for it. As I often like to do, instead of just spewing stuff on Twitter, I’ve decided to do some research.
Since being acquired by the Canadiens, Drouin is third on the team in scoring, behind only Brendan Gallagher and Jeff Petry. But due to injuries, he played fewer games than his two teammates. In fact, he has 0.60 points per games played while Gallagher has 0.63 and Petry 0.54. So as you see, it’s not like he hasn’t produced. Fans are frustrated likely because he hasn’t lived up to their own expectations, and he has spent substantial time on the injured list.
Worst Habs’ trades in history
Without further ado, in chronological order, here are trades that have all been much, much worse than the Drouin trade. As I’m not overly familiar with the older days of Toe Blake and company, I stuck with the modern era of the NHL.
1990 – Serge Savard
To
To
Jyrki Lumme
2nd rd pick (Craig Darby)
To
To
Chris Chelios
Denis Savard
2nd rd pick
To
To
Bobby Smith
Louis Bernard
To
To
Claude Lemieux
Sylvain Turgeon
1995 – Serge Savard/Réjean Houle
To
To
John Leclair
Mark Recchi
Eric Desjardins
Martin Hohenberger
Gilbert Dionne
To
To
Patrick Roy
Jocelyn Thibault
Mike Keane
Martin Rucinsky
Andrei Kovalenko
1996 – Réjean Houle
To
To
Pierre Turgeon
Shayne Corson
Cory Fitzpatrick
Murray Baron
Craig Conroy
5th rd pick
1998 – Réjean Houle
To
To
Stephane Richer
Patrick Poulin
Darcy Tucker
Mike Vukota
David Wilkie
Igor Ulanov
1999 – Réjean Houle
To
To
Mark Recchi
Dainius Zubrus
2nd rd pick (Scott Selig)
6th rd pick (Matt Carkner)
2006 – Bob Gainey
To
To
Mike Ribeiro
Janne Niinimaa
6th rd pick
5th rd pick
2009 – Bob Gainey
To
To
Ryan McDonagh
Scott Gomez
Chris Higgins
Tom Pyatt
Pavel Valentenko
Mike Busto
Doug Janik
2012 – Pierre Gauthier
To
To
Mike Cammalleri
Rene Bourque
Karri Ramo
Patrick Holland
5th rd pick
2nd rd pick
So as you can see, the Drouin for Sergachev trade is nowhere close to any of these trades. It is, however, arguably Marc Bergevin’s worst trade. Considering the number of big trades he completed, it goes to show how good the man was at trading and getting value in that aspect of his role. It’s also important to point out that when talking about Habs’ history, they were created in 1909. For the sake of this exercise, we stopped at 1990 so there were others prior to that, you can bet your hat on it!
Something to note about this research that perhaps was a bit unexpected… Serge Savard has been very critical of his successors recently. With his name being linked to five of the top-12 worst trades, perhaps “The Senator” should look at his own contribution to the demise of the Canadiens after the two Stanley Cups Patrick Roy won him single-handedly?
Please support this website by adding us to your whitelist in your ad blocker. Ads are what helps us bring you premium content and keep this site free! Thank you for your support.
3 thoughts on “Worst Trades In Habs’ Modern History”
Comments are closed.