Assessing Chicago Blackhawks recent trades with history in mind
By Todd Welter
It all started with the Jeremy Roenick trade.
The Blackhawks traded away Jeremy Roenick because Wirtz did not want to meet Roenick’s salary demands.
The Hawks traded Roenick to the Phoenix Coyotes for center Alexei Zhamnov, forward Craig Mills, and a first-round pick in the 1997 NHL draft.
Roenick was one of the biggest stars of the early 1990s Chicago Blackhawks teams. He scored 267 goals and registered 329 assists in eight seasons with the Chicago Blackhawks.
Wirtz did not want to pay Roenick what Roenick felt he was worth.
The Blackhawks thought they could replace Roenick with Zhamnov. He was a promising center with good size and skill. He never came close to matching Roenick’s production.
Mills skated in only 27 games for the Hawks and registered just three assists in two seasons.
The Chicago Blackhawks used the first-round pick on Ty Jones who turned out to be a bust.
Roenick continued to be a good player in Phoenix scoring 24 goals or more in four seasons.
Goalie Ed Belfour traded to the San Jose Sharks
Belfour won two Vezina Trophies and was in goal when the Blackhawks lost the Stanley Cup finals to the Pittsburgh Penguins in 1992.
He was set to become an unrestricted free agent after the 1997 season and he wanted big raise. Plus, he did not enjoy seeing his ice time decrease in favor of Jeff Hackett.
The Chicago Blackhawks traded the disgruntled goalie midway through the 1997 season to the San Jose Sharks for goalie Chris Terreri, wing Ulf Dahlen, defenseman Michal Sykora, and a conditional 1998 second-round draft pick.
Belfour joined the Dallas Stars in the offseason and went on to win the Stanley Cup in 1999.
Terreri would play just 28 games for the Hawks. Dahlen scored just six goals and left for the Washington Capitals in the offseason. Sykora skated in just 56 games. That draft pick turned out to be, well, the Chicago Blackhawks did not get much production out of their draft picks in the late 90s.
Chris Chelios gets traded to the Detroit Red Wings.
Chelios arrived in Chicago as part of a blockbuster trade. The Hawks sent Denis Savard to the Montreal Canadiens for Chelios in 1990.
Chelios anchored the Chicago Blackhawks defense for almost the entire decade.
By 1999, the Blackhawks were mired in mediocrity but the native Chicagoan did not want to leave his hometown team.
With his contract set to expire after the 2000 season, the Blackhawks still decided to trade him to the rival Detroit Red Wings midway through the 1998-1999 season.
Chelios skated for the hated Red Wings for another nine seasons. He helped Detroit win two Stanley Cups and was a part of the Red Wings team that knocked the up-and-coming 2008-2009 Blackhawks out of the Western Conference Finals.
The Hawks got defenseman Anders Eriksson and two first-round picks. Eriksson was traded 13 games into the 2000-2001 season to the Florida Panthers. The first-round picks the Blackhawks got back turned out to be busts in defenseman Steve McCarthy and goalie Adam Munro.