Bad Trades Revisited (Vasteras Edition) [GRADED 6/6]

[RomanesEuntDomus 442]

Bad Trades Revisited

 

The VHL has seen its fair share of controversial trades over the course of the last 40 seasons, trades that people had very different opinions on and where depending on who you asked, you would get a different answer on who was the winner in that deal. Sometimes people valued the pieces going each way differently, other times they didn’t agree on the timing of the transactions, but in most cases you would find at least good arguments for why each side did that deal. But there also is a second, far smaller category of trades: Trades that pretty much everyone thinks are a mistake, deals that nobody sees as a good idea for one team involved and that said team’s General Manager took a lot of flak for. Today, we want to take a look at two of these trades!

 

Looking back at these deals after a few seasons have gone by, do they still look as bad for one team as they did at the time of the trade, or has something changed? We have picked two trades from the league’s recent history that at that time almost everybody seemed to hate for one of the teams involved… Let’s find out if the doubters were right or if the GM and the players involved proved them all wrong.

 

Trade #1 (Season 36)

 

To 

 

S37 VAS 1^st

S37 HSK 3rd

S38 VAS 3rd

Damien Sandow

Guido Schwarz Esq.

 

To 

 

Keiji Toriyama

S37 NYA 4^th

 

 

The Reactions

 

“I just think that at the end of the day a high end depth player like Toriyama is not worth a 1st, two thirds, and two low end depth players. Street has a super high salary, has had consistency issues regarding this current player. All negatives. Yet Corco gave up probably the most anyone could get for Street at this point. Which is saying something imo.” – Devise22

 

“Not worth a (likely) midrange 1st (6 or 7) in this draft to upgrade Sandow and Schwarz.” – Higgins

 

 “Yeah, Corco is far from as bad as some guys make him out to be. Lets see the results, hindsight is always 20/20” – sterling

 

The Verdict

 

Damn it, first trade I’m looking at and I already have to kind of revise the point I was trying to make. Because whenever I thought back to that trade, I remembered it as a deal that Vasteras and Corco got a ton of criticism for by pretty much the entire league. But when I just read through the trade that again, the perception actually turned out to not be nearly as bad, it was basically just a few people that hated the trade for Vasteras, while the majority didn’t seem to mind it that much. Still, Vasteras was criticized quite a bit for paying so much for a player that New York had acquired for way less just about a season ago. Many saw it as bad asset management that the Iron Eagles paid what was likely to be a mid first round pick and some other assets for a mid-level TPE-player with activity issues.

 

But how should the deal be rated now, about three and a half seasons later and with every player involved in the deal retired by now? First of all, only Toriyama and the Vasteras 1^st turned out to be pieces of actual value, so we will only look at them. We will start with the Vasteras pick. Do you remember the quote from Higgins about Toriyama not being worth a likely midrange 1^st rounder? Well as it turns out, that’s not where that pick ended up at all. In one of the craziest playoff “races” this league has ever seen, the Vasteras Iron Eagles lost a 20 point lead on the Cologne Express after the deadline. Add in the fact that the Cologne Express were a team that had sold off players at the deadline while the Iron Eagles were buyers, and you have an incredibly unlikely scenario that absolutely nobody expected, including the people in Vasteras, New York and Cologne. So people already didn’t like the value of the trade when the first was still a pick in the 6-8 range and now it suddenly was a lottery pick. At the end of the day, the Vasteras pick turned out to be the 3^rd overall selection and after being okay with the trade at first, this is when most people started seeing this as a terrible trade for Vasteras. In a very strong Season 37 draft the New York Americans now held picks #2 to #4 and they ended up selecting Jakob Linholm, Tom Slaughter and Logan Laich. It is worth noting that the 3^rd overall ended up being Tom Slaughter, but that was only due to the fact that Americans GM Christopher Miller wanted to give first generation player Jakob Linholm the honor of  going second overall, while just going by TPE and reputation the #2 spot would clearly have been Slaughters. Most likely the #3 pick would have been Logan Laich then with Linholm going #4, so these are the players that I will equate to the Vasteras 1^st when comparing how this deal turned out.

 

And Keiji Toriyama? After just returning from inactivity not long before the trade and with people still doubting his consistency and future activity, he kept proving people wrong! Toriyama was an active player throughout the rest of his career, a career that finally ended when he retired this off-season. While he wasn’t able to carry the Iron Eagles to the playoffs in Season 37, he still became one of the best and most active players on Vasteras. The team didn’t had much success in the post-season, but Toriyama was still one of the biggest contributors for the team and all in all, a pleasant surprise.

 

So who actually won that deal? First of all I actually think it was a trade where both teams got more than they expected. The Americans received a better pick than they would’ve dared dreaming of, while the Iron Eagles traded for a good depth-player that ended up being a legitimate top-line threat for them. Toriyama stayed with the Iron Eagles for the rest of his career, but this career was one year shorter than it could have been. On the other hand both Linholm and Laich, the likely picks at #3, aren’t on New York anymore so it’s tough to judge the actual value the Americans ended up with. They ended up dealing both these players to Cologne in a trade that paid them even more picks, some of whom panned out and some didn’t. At the end of the day I would say that this actually turned out to be a more even deal than people thought, especially after the lottery. I would still give the edge to New York, not because of the pure value they got but because of how much the Season 37 draft boosted the morale and the atmosphere around the team, as they went from rebuilder to contender in pretty much just one draft. The Iron Eagles on the other hand were never able to battle their way out of mediocrity, even with a Toriyama that was better than most people had expected.

 

Trade #2 (Season 36)

 

To

 

Cody Inko

S37 HSK 3^rd

To

 

S38 VAS 1^st (Brock Waldron)

Jaden Button

 

 

The Reactions

 

“I give up defending this franchise. At least they'll avoid the embarrassment of missing the playoffs this season. Hopefully.” – Victor

 

“I don't get this.....” – Seth

 

“Yeah this is a shit trade for Vasteras“ – Squinty

 

“this is pathetic“ – CoachReilly

 

“A first for toriyumi (LOL) and now a first for Inko (Pisses self laughing)[…]

Inko is one season away from regression with 400tpe (380 but lets round up for corcos sake) with no banked tpe for regression next season and he is in the range from a semi active to an active, he does the odd pt but claims welfare.  

That in my mind is no wear near a first....” – kesler17

 

“This is getting out of hand.................” – Kachur

 

“I haven't said anything really in these trades but when you look at them combined for Vasteras I just don't get it.  If Corco isn't getting players as part of Part 2 deals with currently undisclosed players for cheap later on I don't understand.  You can make the best case scenario that Vasteras got "fair market value" for some trades or that every trade was kind of close even though they lost slightly to get what they wanted. Season 30/31/32 players are going to get hit by depreciation.  That is 5 players or approx 1/2 of Vasteras ready to decline next season and the team hasn't even hit a high peak yet and they might level off already and then decline as a team.” – Mike

 

The Verdict

 

More Vasteras trades, yup, people really didn’t like their deals for much of the last decade or so. People like Victor were still defending the Iron Eagles when Corco did the Toriyama deal, but even they didn’t like their newest trade at all and started turning on the much criticized franchise. Cody Inko was a player that ended his career with only 428 TPE and who started getting depreciated shortly after he arrived in Vasteras. To add fuel to the fire, the Iron Eagles even traded Inko back to Cologne as nothing but a cap dump this last season, when Inko was about to retire. The market for buyers was a different one in Season 36 than it was today but was it really worth for Vasteras to pay a 1^st for just about three seasons of Cody Inko?

 

Inko had some pretty decent seasons for Vasteras, but at the end of the day he was still what people always claimed him to be: a depth player. If you consider yourself a contender and a regressing 400 TPE defender-turn-forward is one of your core pieces, you might be in trouble. So even though Inko performed decently enough for Vasteras, they didn’t get anything great in him. But what did Cologne end up with on the other hand? The Season 38 draft was one of the weaker ones in recent memory, with less than a round of active players at the time of the draft, but the Cologne Express still had a decent piece with the 6^th Overall. While the 6^th Overall ended up being goalie Brock Waldron, it wasn’t the Express who made that selection because they had traded up to 5^th Overall before the draft, selecting Steve Tremblay there.

 

In his short time in the league Tremblay has shown some promise, but he is far from a star player so far. The trade that sent him to New York along with some draft picks saw rental Wesley Kellinger and Season 36 Defenseman Andrey Zadorov coming to Cologne and with a larger scale deal like that it is hard to judge what Tremblay’s singular value in that trade actually was. But so far it actually looks like the deal ended up not being nearly as bad for the Iron Eagles as people would have though. While the Toriyama deal saw both teams ending up with more value than they could’ve hoped for, this one actually ended up with both teams earning very little. Vasteras only got a depth player that never helped them win anything, while the 1^st rounder Cologne got ended up being in a terrible draft and even though the player picked still has some promise, he isn’t in Cologne anymore. All in all instead of being a very bad trade for Vasteras, this ended up just being a rather forgettable one.

[HawksFan19 89]

Content: 3/3

 

Very cool. Would love to see more these historical articles speaking about past trades and stuff. Even for a regular media spot! Good job Winter!

 

Grammar: 2/2

 

Lets - Let's

mid first - mid-first

self laughing - self-laughing

approx - approx.

 

Minor errors.

 

Appearance: 1/1

 

Could add some color. Still looks nice. 

 

Final 12/12

Edited September 28, 2014 by HawksFan19

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Where's that cuff trade 2.