The St. Louis Blues made one of their biggest trades in franchise history 24 years ago. However, that deal actually set off a chain of events that set the franchise back.
Every year, around this time, St. Louis Blues get a little nostalgic. It is altogether fitting that the Blues will wear their 90’s retro jerseys against the New York Islanders on February 27, 2020. That is because on February 27, 1996, Blues fans found out that the greatest player ever would be wearing that same style of sweater.
Wayne Gretzky was picked up by the Blues on that very date, 24 years ago. For their part in the trade, the Los Angeles Kings received Craig Johnson, Patrice Tardif, Roman Vopat, St. Louis’ 5th round choice in the 1996 Entry Draft and the Blues 1st round pick in the 1997 draft.
The fifth rounder would become Peter Hogan and the first rounder the next year would be Matt Zultek. Neither played an NHL game in their careers.
It was supposed to be the big trade that would put the Blues over the top and help them win a Stanley Cup. If it did not happen that season, surely it would happen soon after.
St. Louis had everything in place. They had Gretzky’s very good friend and top-tier goal scorer, Brett Hull, on the team. They also had a familiar faces with Esa Tikkanen and Grant Fuhr, Gretzky’s former teammates in Edmonton, on the roster.
Fuhr still had good years left in the tank, so the team was somewhat set with goaltending. They had future Hall of Fame defenders in Al MacInnis and Chris Pronger on the team. There were other Hall of Fame players on that team, even if many were past their prime.
Despite a heartbreaking loss to Detroit in the playoffs that spring, you figured all the team really needed was a depth piece or two added to the roster. Maybe one more scorer would suffice, but Geoff Courtnall was still going good enough. What more could you need beyond having the greatest assist man in history and one of the game’s best pure goal scorers of all time?
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Unfortunately, what really happened was February 27, 1996 set in motion a chain of events that changed the outlook of the Blues for the near future.
In the immediate honeymoon phase of the trade, it all seemed great. Gretzky eight goals and 22 points in 18 regular season games.
In 13 playoff games, Gretzky had 16 points. Only two of those points were goals and that became a problem for those in charge.
By those, I mean Mike Keenan. The Blues had an offer on the table for Gretzky near or at the end of the regular season. Why it was not signed, nobody knows, other than perhaps just needing tweaks by Gretzky and his agent. Regardless, Gretzky loved the city (still does, since he has a home here) and thought St. Louis would be his last stop.
Instead, genius Keenan pulled the offer off the table as some backwards thinking motivational tool. Why you think you mess with the player known as The Great One, even in his playing days, with some asinine contract ploy is one of the biggest blunders of all time.
Gretzky became so offended that he basically said it was him or me to the Blues. The Blues were not in a spot where they could afford to fire Keenan, so Gretzky signed with the New York Rangers.
Some will argue that Gretzky was done. His career did not last too long after, but the Blues still missed out on seasons of 72 and 67 points, 20-plus goals in each of those and the lone playoff season with the Rangers Gretzky had 10 goals and 20 points in 15 games.
72 points would have been third on the team the following year and 67 would have been third on the team again in 1997-98. Pierre Turgeon was a fantastic pick up for the Blues, but how do we know St. Louis might not have afforded both?
Regardless, the loss of Gretzky continued to have an impact. Not that the relationship was great to begin with, but Hull became increasingly vocal and volatile in the locker room. He and Keenan did not get along and it affected his performance. Hull went from 42 goals and never having scored fewer than 30 goals in a non-labor shortened season to 27 goals.
Some of that was due to age, but if you wanted, you could say some was due in part to being worn down by the Mike Keenan years.
Joel Quenneville was coach by that 27 goal season, but sometimes relationships cannot be mended. When the trade for Gretzky was made, nobody could have envisioned that the greatest goal scorer in team history would be gone not long after.
Hull was allowed to walk in free agency a season and a half after Keenan was fired. Nevertheless, as time goes on, it is hard to separate the Keenan situation from Hull eventually having to leave St. Louis. Adding salt to that wound, Hull would win a Stanley Cup the very next year with the Dallas Stars.
Hull’s 58 points that season were a career low to that point, but he still was an extremely productive player right up until the lockout that cancelled the 2004-05 season. Maybe his salary would have altered their roster choices, but it is hard to argue the Blues of the early 2000’s would not have been better with Hull. Maybe Hull could have been the difference in the conference final against the Colorado Avalanche. We’ll never know.
Clearly, the Blues did not suffer all that long. In Quenneville’s first full season, the team had 98 regular season points, won the Presidents Trophy two seasons after that and went to the conference final in 2000-01.
Still, it is hard not to imagine what might have happened had the Blues been able to stick together.
I firmly believe in the butterfly effect, where if you change one small thing then everything else around it might change. So, you can’t just plug Gretzky and Hull into those Quenneville teams and figure it all stays the same.
Even so, I’d like to have seen what might have happened if Gretzky and Hull stayed together those final years. Maybe the Blues win a Cup and maybe they don’t. We would at least not have to feel weird about celebrating the fact Gretzky played here.
Time has a way of making people forget. Social media had comments about how Gretzky walked out on the Blues or he was just a rental. That was not the case and if not for Mike Keenan he would have stayed. Instead, the Blues were just a footnote on one of the greatest sports careers of all time.