This is a series of stories that will highlight some of the more consequential trades made throughout the 18-year history of the EURO League. We aren’t looking for the most one-sided deals or the ones that seemed to help both sides … we’re just looking at the trades and how they affected the league. We were originally intending to identify the Top 10 trades in league history, but that’s just impossible and super subjective. So, instead, we’ll give an overview of everything. No judgments.
Well, some judgments.
PART IV: Hidden gems, game-changers and wacky stuff
You want to win every trade you make. That’s only natural. And you want that trade to make a difference in your team; a positive one.
Sometimes the exchange turns out even better than you had hoped; sometimes they are major flops and you vow never to trade again.
Hidden gems
Every so often a prospect blossoms beyond all expectations and becomes an excellent player. Take Alex Debrincat for example. He scored 83 points for Oslo last season and do you know where he was drafted? Third last (70th overall) in the Season 7 draft. Or David Pastrnak, who was the fifth-last player picked in the Season 4 draft. He went on to score 80 or more points in four different seasons for Belfast. More often than not, general managers accept second- and third-round draft picks in trades because they are hoping to draft a prospect who will develop like Debrincat and Pastrnak did.
However, history shows there have not been many trades that have brought teams Debrincats and Pastrnaks.
Copenhagen General Manager Martin Sayle has done a nice job of finding future talent and developing them into major contributors. That’s one of the reasons he has three EURO Cups on his resume. The team had traded a second-rounder to Minsk for Andres De La Garma in Season 3, Sayle stuck with him and De La Garma was in goal for the Tridents’ first two Cups, not to mention his Playoff MVP trophy win with Helsinki last season.
But a trade Copenhagen made in Season 5, and Sayle’s willingness to stick with the player, looks like one of the more genius trades there ever was. In Season 2, Berlin traded away a third-round pick along with veteran Brian Campbell to Madrid for backup goalie Erik Ersberg. The player taken with that 3rd-round pick, Marko Dano, was traded three seasons later to Copenhagen along with another draft pick for veteran Andrej Mezsaros. Since then Dano, an Austrian-born Slovakian forward, has been a crucial part of the Tridents and their Cup wins. He has played alongside Auston Matthews since the star American centerman came into the league and Dano has been great, especially the last five seasons when he has produced 80 or more points and been at least +20 each season.
But then again, there are gambles that really fizzle. Moscow traded away goalie Juuse Saros to Lisbon hoping to benefit from a prospect named Vitali Kravtsov, goalie Alex Stalock, and a first-round pick. The draft pick was used to select Stanislav Svozil and unless he and Kravtsov suddenly get much better, this looks like a loss for Moscow/Hanover/Liverpool.
Game-changers
The trade of Dylan Sikura from Gothenburg to Munich for Ivan Provorov before Season 16 has made all the difference in the world for Munich, which has risen to the top of the Southern Conference this season. Sikura has put together several long scoring streaks and in his first two years with the Red Bulls has averaged 311 shots, 37 goals and 53.5 assists as their first-line center. Provorov was later traded to Minsk for Bison Bartek and prospects Jet Luchanko and Miguel Marques, so the Frolunda might even out the deal yet.
A decade earlier, Minsk made a 3-for-1 trade that immediately transformed the Hussars. Off to Geneva went Val Nichushkin, Sergei Kostitsyn and Ilya Nikulin for defenseman Michael Del Zotto. It was surprising at the time that the GM Igor Kirunov, who is from Belarus, would part with the Belarusian Kostitsyn and the two talented Russians. Del Zotto went on to lead the talented Hussar defense corps in scoring four times, he still holds the team record for points by a defenseman in a season (69), and he is a big reason Minsk won Cups in Seasons 6 and 8.
With one Cup already on his trophy case next to three Regular Season Champion (President’s Trophy) awards, Helsinki GM Jukka Tuominen made a deal that is widely credited for his Season 17 win. Amsterdam accepted promising forward prospect Cole Eiserman and a first-round pick that ended up being Bill Zonnon this season for Finnish sniper Patrik Laine. He scored 37 goals and 80 points last season and is on pace for a 129-point season in Season 18.
The Berlin Smurfs are definitely legendary for their partying, their cheerleaders, and their ability to reign supreme in the Southern Conference for more than a decade. Champions of the conference nine times, they have made nine Cup Finals and won the grand prize three times. General Manager Guybrush Threepwood remembers the turning point in his franchise well.
“After losing to Belfast in the Final of Season 5 in seven games, followed by a weak start in Season 6, I traded away 19-year-old David Pastrnak and a first-rounder for 23-year-old Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, only to get thumped by Paris in the Conference Finals,” he said. “So, in Season 7, I decided to reshuffle the whole team and traded away all my main players for a future core that helped me win a lot throughout the next 10 seasons.”
Threepwood shipped superstar Logan Couture (28, PO 94), Louie Eriksson (32, PO 85) and Alexander Edler (31, PO 83) to Athens for RW Vadim Shipachyov (24, PO 90) and D Staffan Kronwall (23, PO 90). And then goalie Calvin Pickard (23, PO 85) came from Prague for Aleksander Barkov (22, PO 85) who later found his way back to Berlin in another trade as the team’s future line 2 center.
“And yes, the big star arrived in Season 6 as well,” he added. “Erik Forssell and a 3rd-rounder came from London for two 2nd-rounders. Steal of the decade!!!”
Umm, we’re not positive that last deal was worthy of three exclamation points.
Eyebrow-raisers
Maybe it’s the blinding glory of the EURO Cup, or perhaps the strain of staying under the league salary cap, but we often see some wild trades coming through the Trade Committee.
In Season 2, Prague gave up Jason Pominville for three first-round picks to Athens. “Pommer” was a good player … but three Number 1 picks?
That seemed to be the start of a trend for that kind of trade. The next season, Minsk sent Zach Parise to Gothenburg for Milan Lucic and two firsts. The year after that, Moscow wanted Max Pacioretty pretty badly. Darnell Nurse and two first-round picks badly, in fact.
Sometimes, the sheer number of assets involved in some trades can leave people wide-eyed and wondering what just happened. In Season 12, Gothenburg went nutsy cuckoo, trading away three players to St. Petersburg for five players and three draft picks, following that deal up by trading three more guys to Bratislava for five more players and one more draft pick. That’s a total of 10 new players and four picks for Gothenburg in just two trades.
Bern’s new GM Shalom Connell shook the earth in that part of the Alps recently when he took over the franchise. He made nine deals right off the bat including a famous one in which two local legends were uprooted. We’re talking about when Mika Zibanejad (15 seasons in Bern) was traded for Alex Galchenyuk (14 seasons in Prague) straight up. The Bears shot up the standings to number 3 overall but were bounced in 7 games in the second round of the playoffs by Munich. This season, those two teams and Lisbon are racing neck and neck … and neck … toward the Southern Conference title.
Another trade with a real “Wow!” effect occurred before Season 15 started when Helsinki and Oslo got together and swapped several huge names. Sam Bennett had just been handed his Leading Scorer Trophy after tallying 121 points for the Jokerit, setting a league record with 84 assists along the way. But GM Jukka Tuominen shipped him to Oslo with Alex Debrincat and a first-round pick. What did Tuominen get in return? Tyler Seguin, Jonathan Toews, Dillon Dube and a first-round pick. The trade helped both teams, but you would have to say Helsinki did the right thing because they won the first of their two Cups that season.
Next: Trade Statistics Roundup
