Ever since the Flyers signed Jaromir Jagr on July 1 of this summer, the reaction has been decidedly mixed. One thing that I think everyone can agree on: For many years, Jagr was just about the last player anyone would have expected to end up in Philadelphia.
After all those years of Jagr being on the other side of the Flyers' rivalries with the Penguins and Rangers, he was associated as being an "enemy" player. Of course, there was also his flashy style on the ice, the extreme mullet (now long since cut), his off-ice celebrity and the general perception that he was the antithesis of the type of athlete that the average Philadelphia sports fan embraces.
I was initially surprised when the news came down of Jagr's signing. Although the Flyers had cropped up in rumors as a potential suitor a few days before the start of free agency, they were supposedly a longshot candidate behind Montreal, Detroit and Pittsburgh. Whether it was because the other clubs offered less money, because the Flyers and Jagr mutually saw a better fit or a combination of the two, the 39-year-old future Hall of Famer landed here.
The more I thought about the one-year signing, however, the more it made sense for both sides. If Jagr can even be half the NHL player he was in his best years, his acquisition should be sufficient to plug the gap left by Ville Leino's departure. From Jagr's standpoint, he's coming to a team where he will be counted on to play an important role yet no longer be counted on be one of its two leading scorers.
As a one-year arrangement, it gives the Flyers and Jagr freedom to see how things go and decide either to extend the relationship with another one-year contract or move in a different direction. In an absolute worst case scenario, if the Flyers' transitional season ends up being a bumpy road, Jagr could be a trade candidate to a team looking for a Cup run rental who has already won every major team and individual prize in his sport.
At any rate, I thought it would a fun little exercise on a cooped-up weekend to come up with a top 10 list of players who-- for whatever reason(s) -- once seemed unlikely to end up in Philadelphia and whose acquisition came as a surprise at the time it happened.
My top 10 list would be as follows, in no particular order after number 3:
1. Eric Lindros (summer 1992): See section below
2. Bernie Parent (reacquisition in 1973 offseason): Parent was angered and hurt about having been traded and he took a public swipe at the Flyers, saying they were a classless organization, on the day he signed in the WHA with the Philadelphia Blazers.
3. John LeClair, Eric Desjardins and Gilbert Dionne (early in 1994-95 lockout season): The surprise here wasn't so much the players that came here, as the fact that the Flyers traded Mark Recchi to get them. Philly got off a tough start in the shortened season after a lockout wiped out of nearly half of the schedule. Few expected Bob Clarke, in the first season of his second stint as Flyers GM, to make a blockbuster trade so quickly. The knee-jerk reaction when the Flyers traded Recchi to Montreal was that the club had gotten worse rather than better. I will never forget Gene Hart going on the air the next night, defending the deal to the hilt, and saying that it would be a positive turning point for the club that people would someday look back on as a great trade. The old sage was right, except that it only took a few games until the Flyers suddenly transformed into a contender.
4. Peter Forsberg (summer 2005): The deal happened so suddenly, and there had not been many rumors about Forsberg coming here as a UFA after the lockout ended.
5. Darryl Sittler (mid-season 1981-82): The Flyers were among several trade suitors and said to be among the front-runners but it was still quite a surprise to see the former Maple Leafs superstar traded here to join his friend, Bill Barber, as well as Clarke.
6. Mark Howe (summer 1982): Boston was the team strongly rumored to be about to land him from Hartford. The Flyers negotiated more or less under the radar, although they were one of the teams for whom Howe was willing to waive his no-trade clause.
7. Mikael Renberg (reacquisition during 1998-99 season): The reversal of the Chris Gratton acquisition of the previous season had been rumored. However, the trade rumors were flatly denied by Clarke the day before it happened. In addition, it was a pretty clear admission of failure to send Gratton back to Tampa.
8. Keith Primeau (midseason 1999-2000): There had been so many Rod Brind'Amour trade rumors over the years that I was caught off-guard when he finally was traded to Carolina in the deal that brought Primeau here.
9. Jaromir Jagr (summer 2011): See above.
10. Bob Dailey (midseason 1976-77): Daily was supposedly an untouchable in Vancouver for several years and then suddenly fell out of favor. The fact that the Flyers were able to acquire him for the modest trade cost of Larry Goodenough and Jack McIlharghey caught the rest of the NHL off-guard. For more, see the
Heroes of the Past article on Dailey that I wrote for the Flyers' official site.
Here are two others that come to mind:
Petr Nedved (mid-season 2005-06): His reputation and being a member of rival teams for so many years made him seem like an unlikely Flyer, although the acquisition made sense at the time from the standpoint that Forsberg had been struggling with recurring groin injuries since Thanksgiving. Oddly enough, if Flyers GM Russ Farwell had been able to trade up at the 1990 Draft,
he likely would have chosen Nedved, whom the general manager knew well from having brought to the WHL's Seattle Thunderbirds following Nedved's defection from the former Czechoslovakia.
Paul Coffey (mid-season 1996-97): The deal to bring Coffey over from Hartford had been much rumored before the season, but it dragged on and was supposedly dead. Suddenly, the rumors popped up again in early December. Bob Clarke admitted the club had interest before the season but said the chances of trading for Coffey at that point were minimal because the aging player was not having a good season. On Dec. 15, 2006, the deal went down, sending Coffey and a 1997 third-round pick (Kris Mallete) to Philly for Kevin Haller and a first-round draft pick (later traded to San Jose and used to select Scott Hannan).
*****
Nothing, and I mean nothing, could ever top the drama that led to Eric Lindros' arrival in Philadelphia. That even includes the circumstances that ultimately led to the Flyers trading him to the Rangers in August 2001.
There has been so much revisionist history over the years about the initial Lindros trade to Philadelphia, that I think it merits a special section of its own on this blog. There were so many twists and turns to the plot that, at many different junctures spanning the fall of 1991 to the summer of 1992, it truly felt like there was little chance that Lindros would ever end up being a Flyer.
Throughout the the 1991-92 season, there were endless rumors about roughly half of the teams in the NHL offering outrageous trade packages to Quebec for the rights to the Eric Lindros, the unsigned first overall pick of the 1991 Draft. The Flyers were mentioned in media reports of the time as one of the teams actively vying for Lindros, but they were never mentioned among the supposed front runners (first it was Toronto, then Chicago, then the New York Rangers).
When the Flyers made a big late-season trade with Pittsburgh, acquiring Mark Recchi for Rick Tocchet (whose name had been tied in with the Lindros trade discussions), Kjell Samuelsson and Ken Wregget, they seemed to be moving in another direction. General manager Russ Farwell said that the club was going to build around Rod Brind'Amour and Recchi, and noted that top prospects Peter Forsberg, Slava Butsayev and Mikael Renberg would be waiting in the wings in near future.
There have been many myths that have arisen over the years about the Forsberg component of the Lindros trade. I consider Jay Greenberg's Full Spectrum book (published in 1996) to be the definitive and most accurate account of the entire process, both because it was written while the events were still in the semi-recent past and because his research was extremely extensive and beyond reproach from my standpoint.
Despite public pronouncements to the contrary, the Flyers were still very much involved in the Lindros discussions after acquiring Recchi. They were actually intensifying their interest in acquiring Lindros to play on a line with Recchi. Quebec, of course, inquired about Recchi's availability in a Lindros package and they were told he was not available.
As an alternative, Quebec wanted Brind'Amour and one of Forsberg or Butsayev (who, at the time, was considered a hot prospect but pretty quickly fizzled out as a bust in the NHL) in any deal for Lindros' rights. The Nordiques only backed off the demand for Brind'Amour when the Flyers sweetened the cash portion of the trade package (ultimately $15 million in cash) and included the rights to Forsberg.
For the Flyers, the options came down to this: 1) Have Lindros and Brind'Amour right away and trade Forsberg's rights, 2) Have Lindros (and Recchi) virtually alone on a strip-mined roster in 1992-93, keep Butsayev and wait at least one year for Forsberg, or 3) step out of the running for Lindros, keep Brind'Amour and Butsayev and wait at least one more season for Forsberg. The club decided that option 1 (a nucleus of Lindros, Recchi, and Brind'Amour with a rookie Butsayev joining immediately and Renberg a year or so away) would be a good basis to build a contending club. As it turned out, they were right on every count except Butsayev's potential.
Now let's dispose of two urban legends that still make the rounds about why the Flyers included Forsberg in the deal.
It is 100 percent false that Forsberg was not interested in playing in Philadelphia at the time because he "wanted to play in a more European-type of city." I don't even know where this nonsense started. The player had every intention of coming to Philadelphia when he felt physically ready for the NHL.
Forsberg understood that he needed to add considerable muscle even if his skills were already NHL caliber. That, and that alone, was why he declined to come to Philadelphia when first offered a contract. Renberg did the same thing for the same reason.
At the time he was drafted in 1991, Forsberg weighed only about 175 pounds. He also had only 23 games of Elitserien under his belt, mostly playing on MoDo's third line. A year later, he was up to about 180 pounds and was starting to gain more ice time on MoDo but was still getting his feet wet playing against grown men (Foppa was already ripping apart junior-aged players in international competition). Ultimately, Forsberg made his NHL debut two years after being traded to Quebec. He made use of the two years to add nearly 20 more pounds of solid muscle as his frame filled out and to become a world class player against all levels of competition.
The second urban legend was one that was commonly advanced by Quebec/Colorado: Forsberg was the player that they really wanted all along and the talk about Brind'Amour and Butsayev were ploys to ensure they got their man. According to the Greenberg book, while the Nords drove a real hard bargain over the player and draft pick components -- since they had so many teams involved in a bidding war -- it was money that Quebec's owner Marcel Aubut coveted above all else. As a matter of fact, it was their lust for money that led them to turn down trade packages that, at the time, would have been considered superior to the Flyers' offer from a player compensation standpoint.
For instance, according to Full Spectrum, the Chicago Blackhawks could have sealed the deal with Quebec months earlier if Mike Keenan could have convinced owner Bill Wirtz to cough up $12 million worth of cash in addition to a package that included perennial 40-goal-scorer Steve Larmer, All-Star goaltender Ed Belfour, starting defenseman Steve Smith, top prospect Dean McAmmond and a pair of first-round draft picks. Notorious skinflint Wirtz gave the OK to the rest of the deal but refused to pay cash. That put Chicago out of the running, even when the team proposed an alternate deal sending Jeremy Roenick (then a 21-year-old coming off a 53 goal, 103 point season) in place of the 30-year-old Larmer and downgrading other components of the offer. At that point, Keenan and the Hawks stepped out of the bidding.
Ultimately, of course, the Flyers basically gave the Nordiques everything they wanted. So did the New York Rangers. The player compensation portion of the Rangers trade was arguably superior to Philly's, sending Alexei Kovalev,Tony Amonte, Doug Weight,John Vanbiesbrouck and three first round picks spaced out over five years plus $12 million in cash for the right to Lindros.
Liking the Rangers' offer better than Philly's, the Nordiques tried to back out of the already agreed-upon deal with the Flyers and Quebec announced it had traded Lindros to the Rangers. When the disputed double trade went to arbitrator Larry Bertuzzi, there was doubt right up until the end over whether he would rule that the handshake deal to Philly was enforceable.
I remember listening live to Bertuzzi's announcement of his decision. His speech dragged on interminably as he first listed why the Flyers had a good case and then countered himself with points on why the Rangers had a legitimate claim. It was sort of akin to watching a tennis match that goes seven sets and comes down to a lengthy final game. The only difference is that two franchises and their fans had lumps in their collective throats and their hearts were racing as the arbitrator went on and on.
At long last, Bertuzzi revealed the smoking gun in the case: The Nords had released Lindros' private phone number to Philadelphia, something they had repeatedly and adamantly refused to do in order to allow other clubs to gauge his interest in playing for them prior to trading for his rights. For this reason, Bertuzzi said that it was clear that Quebec had finalized a trade with the Flyers and it had only to be presented to league officials when the Rangers approached the Nordiques with their final offer.
As a result, he awarded Lindros' rights to Philadelphia, modifying the final trade slightly to include the rights to prospect Chris Simon (whose right had been discussed but not included in the original agreement) rather than the higher of the Flyers 1992 first-round picks (used to select Ryan Sittler when the Flyers had to use the pick themselves).
People throughout Philadelphia rejoiced when Bertuzzi finally said Lindros' rights belonged to the Flyers.
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