Back in 2016, two trades happened that seemed like seismic events in the NHL that… never really impacted any of the teams involved in the way that they thought it would:
- PK Subban is traded from the Montreal Canadiens to the Nashville Predators in exchange for Shea Weber
- Taylor Hall is traded from the Edmonton Oilers to the New Jersey Devils in exchange for Adam Larsson
At the time, these felt like franchise defining moves that would have immediate impacts, but ultimately didn’t really move the needle in any significant way.
- Taylor Hall wont a Hart and helped the Devils get to the playoffs for the first time in six years, but then missed the playoffs for the next two and was traded to Arizona in 2019 for Kevin Bahl, Nick Merkley, Nate Schnarr, and the pick that NJ used to get Dawson Mercer
- Adam Larsson did help the Oilers on defense, but ultimately never got farther than the 2nd round with Edmonton. He was taken by Seattle in the 2021 expansion draft
- PK helped Nashville make the Stanley Cup finals his first year with his new club, but fell short of winning it all, losing to the Penguins in six games. He was traded to New Jersey in 2019 to free up cap space.
- Shea Weber’s time in Montreal was plagued by injury. He did help the Habs to their first Stanley Cup Finals appearance in nearly 30 years with their Cinderella run in the 2021 playoffs, but lost the series in five games. Weber has been LITRetired ever since that run.
How did you guys feel about those trades when they happened? Ambivalence? Excitement?
Preds fan here. I thought the Preds were making a big mistake trading Weber. He was the backbone of the team and best player by far. If he hadn’t fallen apart in Montreal, I think we’d be talking about him in the same breath with MacInnis and Bourque.
But in the end, Weber declined fast and PK was never the difference maker the Preds were looking for. The one thing PK did bring to the Preds was a sense of putting all the chips on the table. The other players responded by mostly having their best career performances all in one year to get them to the cup.
If a few plays had gone differently in those finals, we might be saying how PK got them a cup. It really could have gone either way in that series.
For all the criticism towards Subban, warranted or not, he definitely always gave his 110% and that’s gotta be worth something.
I wonder what the Habs would look like today if they’d named him captain instead of Patches.