Remembering the best seasons by an NHL player who was traded midway through

With just one week left before the deadline, let’s kill some time on a Friday with a trade-themed question.

What are the best statistical seasons a player has ever had while being dealt during that same season?

It’s a tricker question than you might think. We’re used to seeing big names get moved at the deadline, but those stars aren’t typically having career years. After all, a player in the middle of a monster season wouldn’t typically be available — for all the talk this time of year about selling high, teams rarely seem to do that.

So today’s post will be a mix of familiar names you might expect and a few you might not. And of course, any talk of the best statistical season hinges on which stat you’re looking at. Let’s start with the big one.

Points

The record for the most points in a season in which a player was traded is 125, and I’m guessing you know who holds it. That would be Joe Thornton, who was traded from Boston to San Jose in November 2005, then caught fire to win the scoring title. Not surprisingly, he’s the only player ever to be traded during an Art Ross season.

You’ll often hear that Thornton is also the only Hart winner to be traded midseason, but that’s not quite true. On Oct. 4, 1991, the Rangers acquired Mark Messier from the Oilers, and racked up 109 points while winning his second Hart. That trade came the day after their opener, so it was indeed a midseason trade. Messier didn’t play a game for Edmonton that year, meaning Thronton remains the only MVP to play for two teams in the same season. But Messier was technically traded during the season, too. We’ll focus on players who actually played for multiple teams in the rest of the post, but I just wanted to slip that in there.

That said, Messier’s 109 points only rank him in fourth spot, behind Thornton and two other names that may surprise you. The first is Bernie Nicholls, who was part of that Messier trade in 1991. That’s not the deal we’re looking for here, though. Instead, we’re looking at the deal that sent him from the Kings to the Rangers in January 1990. He was less than one year removed from his record-setting 150-point season, and while his production had predictably dropped, he still finished that split season with 112 points. That established the record stood until Thornton broke it a quarter-century later.

The third spot goes to a player from a trade you might be thinking of: the 1991 deadline blockbuster that sent Ron Francis from Hartford to Pittsburgh. You often see that deal top rankings of the biggest deadline moves ever made, and for good reason, since Francis was the final piece of the puzzle that led to two championships for the Penguins. The twist here is that Francis himself isn’t our guy; he finished that year with a rather pedestrian 87 points. Instead, it was the main guy going to Hartford — center John Cullen, who finished the year with 110 points, of which a remarkable 94 came in just 65 games in Pittsburgh.

Rounding out our top five is Teemu Selanne, who had 108 points in 1995-96 while going from Winnipeg to Anaheim. The only other members of the midseason trade 100-point club are Jean Ratelle (105 while going from the Rangers to Bruins in the 1975-76 Brad Park blockbuster) and Wayne Gretzky (102 in that weird 1995-96 season when he went from the Kings to a brief stop with the Blues).

Goals

A player has hit the 50-goal mark 209 times over NHL history, but only two of those guys were traded in the year they did it.

One of those names will be familiar to Leafs fans, as well as to anyone who follows the Hockey Hall of Fame. Dave Andreychuk was in the middle of what was a 54-goal season when he was dealt from the Sabres to the Leafs midway through the 1992-93 season as part of a package for Grant Fuhr. It was his first 50-goal season, and he claimed another the next year in Toronto while riding shotgun on Doug Gilmour’s wing.

Andreychuk’s feat was impressive, but it doesn’t quite claim our top spot. Instead, that honor goes to Craig Simpson, the former No. 2 pick who went from the Penguins to the Oilers during the 1987-88 season as part of the Paul Coffey trade. He caught fire in Edmonton, scoring 43 times to finish the year with 56, leading our list.

The next batch of players ends up being a list of Hall of Fame wingers. Brendan Shanahan had 47 goals while going from Hartford to Detroit in 1996-97; Mike Gartner had 45 going from the North Stars to the Rangers in 1989-90; Dino Ciccarelli had 44 going from the Capitals to the North Stars in 1988-89; Joey Mullen had 44 going from the Blues to the Flames in 1985-86; and Mark Recchi had 43 going from the Penguins to the Flyers in 1991-92.

And just for fun …

Games played

You don’t often hear about the single-season games-played leaders, since … well, it’s just a list of all the players who didn’t miss a game in a given year. Or at least, that’s what it should be. There is a way to play more than the maximum number of games, and it comes when a player is traded midway through the season. If his old team had played more games than his new team, and the player ends up dressing for every contest, then it is possible to end up exceeding what should be the limit.

And sure enough, that’s what we see when we check the all-time list. There are eight players in NHL history who’ve played at least 85 games in a season, and all of them can thank a midseason trade for making it happen. The two leaders are Jimmy Carson (Detroit to Los Angeles in 1992-93) and Bob Kudelski (Ottawa to Florida in 1993-94), who both clocked in at 86 games played.

The 85-game club includes recognizable names like Glenn Anderson and Bill Guerin, as well as somewhat lesser-known guys like Mark Lamb and Joe Reekie, plus another we’ll meet in a bit.

Defenseman scoring

We’ve been heavy on the forwards so far, but seeing Reekie’s name show up reminds us not to forget the noble blueliner. Let’s check in on a few of their top trade-interrupted scoring seasons.

The record holder for points isn’t a big surprise, and it’s a guy from a trade we’ve already encountered. That would be Paul Coffey, who went from the Kings to the Red Wings in that Jimmy Carson trade we mentioned in the last section. It was be the third of five midseason trades for Coffey, and he finished that year with a record 87 points.

Nobody comes all that close to top spot, and Coffey himself ends up tied for second with the 69 points he had when he went from the Penguins to the Kings in 1991-92. His somewhat surprising running mate there is Dave Babych, who did a bit of scoring in his early years before becoming the patron saint of defensive defensemen. Babych had 69 points in a 1985-86 season that saw him traded from Winnipeg to Hartford. That puts Coffey and Babych just ahead of Hall of Famer Phil Housley, who finished with 68 points while going from the Flames to the Devils in 1995-96.

If we switch the criteria to goals scored, we see some recognizable names like Rob Blake (19 goals going from Los Angeles to Colorado in 2000-2001) and Ray Bourque (18 while going from Boston to Colorado in 1999-2000). But the record is a two-way tie between some slightly less famous names. Carol Vadnais hit the 20-goal mark during the 1975-76 season that saw him go from the Bruins to the Rangers. And as long-time readers know, any kind of “Wow, I didn’t know that blueliner scored so many goals” piece wouldn’t be complete without Reed Larson, who hit the 20-goal mark six different times including while going from Detroit to Boston at the 1986 deadline.

(As a fun twist, the player Larson was traded for in that one-for-one deal: fellow defenseman Mike O’Connell, who’d go on to become the GM of the Bruins who made the Thornton trade. It’s the circle of life midseason trades.)

PIMs

I’ll keep this one brief, but that kid in me who grew up watching the 1980s Norris Division had to check. And sure enough, we don’t have to scroll far to see some recognizable names.

For example, Dave “The Hammer” Schultz holds the all-time single-season record with 472 PIMs during a 1974-75 season he spent entirely with the Flyers. But he also holds third spot on the list at 405, and that was in a 1977-78 season that saw him traded from the Kings to the Penguins. That makes him the leader for our purposes, well ahead of Norris legends Tie Domi (344 PIMs while going from the Rangers to the Jets in 1992-93) and Basil McRae (342 in 1986-87 while going from the Wings to the Nordiques).

Keep going and you run into seasons from Chris Nilan, Jay Miller, Joey Kocur and Tiger Williams, but I’ll stop here before I end up going down a YouTube rabbit hole and never finish this post.

Devan Dubnyk won 27 of 39 starts with the Wild after being traded from the Coyotes in 2015. (Doug Pensinger / Getty Images)

The goalies

You don’t often see top-tier goaltenders get moved during a season, for obvious reasons. We won’t try to build up the suspense and will instead cut right to the one name everyone is waiting for: Patrick Roy, who was traded from the Habs to the Avalanche during a 1995-96 season that saw him win 34 games.

Seeing Roy here isn’t surprising. What might be is that those 34 wins only tied the NHL record for a traded goaltender. Bill Ranford went from Boston to Edmonton at the 1988 deadline in a deal that worked out OK for the Bruins at the time, and slightly less well two years later when Ranford won the Conn Smythe for beating them in the final.

Maybe more surprisingly, Roy and Ranford’s wins record has since been broken, and it even happened within the last decade. I’ll give you a second to see if you can figure out who did it. Here’s a hint: They were traded midway through a 36-win season, and all they cost was a third-round pick.

Yes, it’s Devan Dubnyk, who had just nine wins with the Coyotes when they sent him to the Wild in January 2015. He’d catch fire in Minnesota in the second half, winning 27 of 39 starts and setting a record that still stands.

Dubnyk’s season also holds the mark for goals against average, but things get even weirder if you dive into some of the other stats. If you look at shutouts, the record for a traded goalie is seven by Peter Budaj in 206-17, when he went from the Kings to the Lightning. That broke the record held by Felix Potvin, who had six when he went from the Canucks to the Kings in 2000-01. And in terms of save percentage, it’s Dubnyk, followed by 2015-16 James Reimer (Leafs to Sharks) and 2013-14 Ben Scrivens (Kings to Oilers). Goalies are weird.

OK, but what about the cap era?

Aside from those goalies, most of the numbers in this post come from well before the cap era, back before the Dead Puck Era ruined everything. So, let’s wrap up with a quick look at who holds the offensive records if we just look at the cap era.

In points, nobody gets close to Thornton’s 125. The next best total is Ilya Kovachuk’s 85 when he went from Atlanta to New Jersey in 2009-10. Next up after that is Jake Guentzel going from the Penguins to the Hurricanes last year, with 77 points in just 67 games, followed by Mark Stone’s 73 on the way from Ottawa to Vegas in 2018-19. After that, you run into Vaclav Prospal, which feels like a good place to stop.

In goals, Kovalchuk’s 41 barely edges out Timo Meier’s 40 when he went from the Sharks to the Devils two years ago. Bo Horvat had 38 the year he went from the Canucks to the Islanders, and after that, it’s all the way back to Bill Guerin and Ryan Smyth both having 36 in 2006-07. Among defensemen, the leaders are Brian Campbell’s 62 points while going from Buffalo to San Jose in 2007-08, and Lubomir Visnovsky’s 15 goals while going from Edmonton to Anaheim in 2009-10.

The games-played mark is fun, as the honor goes to Tyson Barrie playing 85 games between the Oilers and Predators in 2022-23, which is impressive given the season is just 82 games now, instead of 84 like it was when Carson and Kudelski set their mark. There was something about that 2022-23 season, as Lars Eller and Garnet Hathaway both got to 84 that same year.

And finally, the cap-era leader for PIMs is, um, not giving the Hammer and 405 minutes much of a run for his money. Daniel Carcillo did manage to rack up a league-leading 254 PIMs while being dealt from the Coyotes to the Flyers in 2006-07. It’s safe to say that cap-era record isn’t going to be broken, as the leader in the last 10 years is Cody McLeod, who had 145 minutes split between Colorado and Nashville in 2016-17.

(And in case you’re wondering, the record for points by a player who dressed for three teams in a season is Thomas Vanek’s 68 back in 2013-14, when he went from the Sabres to the Islanders to the Habs. Just in case Mikko Rantanen needs something to shoot for.)

(Top photo of Patrick Roy in 2007: Nevin Reid / Allsport/Getty Images)