Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Brian Burke

Brian Burke said recently that he wants to trade up in the draft in order to acquire Tavares. This probably sounds like the stupidest thing that burke has ever said. how on earth does he expect to pull this move off? firstly, would the islanders even be willing to listen to trade talks for Tavares? Currently they have a star goalie but are in desparate need of a franchise player. If Tavares is as good as people are predicting, then he should have infinite value. Secondly, did brian burke go insane?

But lets assume i'm wrong, and that the islanders are willing to trade their first overall pick. Lets look at first overall pick trades from the past to see what they fetched.

In 1999, in order for Brian Burke to acquire the third overall pick (Daniel Sedin) from Chicago, he traded Brian McCabe and Vancouver's first round pick the next season. 1999 was a really bad draft year, so the price paid wasn't very high. DAniel Sedin will never compare to Tavares.

Steve Francis was acquired by the Grizzlies in the 99 draft. He was the first overall pick and everyone knew he was going to be great, but he refused to play for the grizz because he didn't want to learn to speak Canadian. So he was traded to the Houston Rockets for Michael Dickerson, Othella Harrington, Antoine Carr and Brent Price, plus first- and second-round picks to the Grizzlies.

The Eric Lindros trade can not be forgotten. Eric Lindros is an appropriate comparison because, like Tavares, Big E was suggested to be one of the greatest players in the NHL. Lindros refused to play in Quebec, because his dad did not think he was intelligent enough to learn french, so he was traded to colorado for Peter Forsberg, as well as Ron Hextall, Chris Simon, Mike Ricci, Kerry Huffman, Steve Duchesne, a 1st round selection in 1993, another 1st round selection, and $15,000,000 cash.

Now that we have seen what it took to get Steve Francis and Eric Lindros, we are in a better position to understand what the leafs need to give up in order to get Tavares from the islanders. The trade would have to be Stajan, Ponikarovsky, Kaberle, Schenn, Pogge, 3 first round draft picks in the future, and $20,000,000. Even then, i think the islanders might be getting ripped off a little, because everybody knows the leaf players are the biggest bunch of overpaid bums in the league. Plus, the likelihood of a trade this size going down in the new nhl is remote. good players are so much more spread thin now considering the increased amount of teams in the league. Also, the islanders would have a tough time absorbing most the players under the cap that they would recieve in the trade for Tavares.

All in all, i don't think brian burke is going to last long in a major hockey crazed market, when he is making far-fetched promises that he is uncapable of delivering on.

-hark

1 comment:

  1. Steve Francis is such a douche. It's weird how Francis and Lindros BOTH didn't want to play for the team that drafted them. You would think that that would LOWER the asking price since if weren't traded what are you gonna do with them

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