Over the past month we have seen 12 future draft picks get traded in pre-deadline deals, and there will no doubt be more over the next couple of days as we get closer to the March 2 NHL trade deadline.
Draft picks are a popular form of currency for NHL teams at this time of year as they flip them for players they hope can be the final piece to a Stanley Cup puzzle, and a lot of times these draft picks will be very, very overrated.
More often than not, they will turn out to be nothing.
When you are dealing with teams that are in a position to trade draft picks in the middle of the season, they are teams that are generally very good (at least in the top half of the league), which means the picks will most likely be very, very bad. Even if the pick is in the first round, it is most likely going to be a pick at the back end, when it basically becomes a 50-50 gamble as to whether or not that player is going to pan out. In any given draft year once you get past the first six or seven picks the chances of finding a top-line NHL regular significantly drop.
Once you get past the second round, you're lucky if you get a depth player.
But every once in a while the picks that get moved at or near the deadline do end up working out for the team that receives them. Let's take a look at some of the best examples over the past 20 years.
2007
San Jose trades two first-round picks that turn into Max Pacioretty and David Perron
Of all of the Sharks teams that were supposed to win the Stanley Cup and didn't, the 2006-07 team was among the best. Joe Thornton and Patrick Marleau were in the prime of their careers. Thornton was a 114-point player, turning Jonathan Cheechoo into a top goal-scorer. They had young players (all under the age of 25) Milan Michalek, Christian Ehrhoff, Matt Carle, Marc-Edouard Vlasic, Ryane Clowe and Joe Pavelski just starting to make their mark in the NHL.
So you can't blame general manager Doug Wilson for going all in at the deadline, trading multiple first-round picks.
In separate deals he sent a 2007 first-round pick (along with defenseman Josh Gorges) to Montreal for Craig Rivet, and another 2007 first-round pick to St. Louis for Bill Guerin, Ville Nieminen and Jay Bariball.
That pick Montreal received was used to select Max Pacioretty, currently one of the best goal-scorers in the NHL. St. Louis used its pick on David Perron (this was one one of three first-round picks they had that year -- the other two were used on Lars Eller and Ian Cole). Perron spent six seasons in St. Louis before he was traded to Edmonton for Magnus Paajarvi, and after a 28-goal season with the Oilers a year ago was traded to Pittsburgh for Rob Klinkhammer and another first-round pick.
Los Angeles gets Wayne Simmonds for Brent Sopel
At the same deadline the Kings sent veteran defenseman Brent Sopel to Vancouver for two draft picks, a conditional second-round pick (2007 or '08) and a fourth-rounder. The Kings ended up getting the 2007 second-round pick and used it to select Wayne Simmonds. He would later be one of the key pieces the Kings used to acquire Mike Richards from the Philadelphia Flyers before the 2011-12 season. Richards would win the Stanley Cup twice in Los Angeles while Simmonds has turned into one of the best power forwards in the NHL for the Flyers.
2006
Boston gets Milan Lucic for Sergei Samsonov
He may not be the best player on the team (he's not), but there is perhaps no player on the current roster that is more easily identifiable as a Boston Bruin than Milan Lucic. The only reason they have him is because of a deadline deal with the Edmonton Oilers, who were on their way to the Stanley Cup Final that season.
At the 2006 deadline Boston sent Sergei Samsonov to Edmonton in exchange for Marty Reasoner, Yan Stastny and a second-round draft pick.
That second-round pick, which was No. 50 overall, was used to select Lucic. His 133 NHL goals are the seventh most of any player taken in that draft (Bruins first-round pick Phil Kessel is No. 1 with 245 goals).
Washington gets Semyon Varlamov, then messes everything up
This is the story of how the Washington Capitals turned Brendan Witt into something good, turned that return into something better, and then threw it all away on something much, much worse.
The 2005-06 Capitals were a very bad team, right in the middle of that three- or four-season stretch where they bottomed out as a franchise and ended up getting Alex Ovechkin and Nicklas Backstrom as a result.
At the 2006 deadline they traded Brenden Witt -- a 30-year-old defender still seen as a valuable commodity because NHL teams were still operating under the mindset that big, slow defensemen that could play the pre-lockout clutch-and-grab style of hockey -- to the Nashville Predators for Kris Beech (who the Capitals had previously sent to Pittsburgh for Jaromir Jagr) and a first-round draft pick.
That first-round pick was used to select goalie Semyon Varlamov.
After a promising start to his career and with the Capitals having several options in net, the Capitals would send Varlamov to Colorado in July 2011, for another first-round pick that would turn out to be in the top 15 of the 2012 draft. That pick was used to select Filip Forsberg, which is great. Except the Capitals now infamously traded Forsberg to Nashville at the 2013 deadline for Martin Erat and Michael Latta.
2004
Washington gets Mike Green for Robert Lang
Not all of these experiences are bad for the Capitals, though, because in 2004 they sent veteran Robert Lang to Detroit for Tomas Fleischmann and their choice of Detroit's first-round pick in 2004 or '05. The Capitals took the '04 pick and ended up with defenseman Mike Green.
Chicago gets Niklas Hjalmarsson for Alexander Karpotsev
Given how much of a powerhosue the Blackhawks have been over the past six years, it is easy to forget that a little more than a decade ago Chicago was pretty irrelevant and actually had a 10-year stretch of making the playoffs just once. The Blackhawks were in the middle of that run during the 2003-04 season, which was when they made what at the time seemed to be a pretty minor deadline deal, sending veteran defenseman Alexander Karpotsev to the New York Islanders.
They ended up getting a key part of their defense that would help them win two Stanley Cup titles.
That fourth-round pick, in the 2005 draft, was 108th overall pick and was used on defenseman Niklas Hjalmarsson, a rock on Chicago's blue line for the past several seasons. When you look back at the 2005 draft he was one of the last productive players taken in that class. The only players selected after him that have appeared in more than 300 games to this point are Darren Helm, Nathan Gerbe, Mark Fayne, Matt D'agostini, Sergei Kostitsyn, Anton Stralman and Patric Hornqvist.
1999
Buffalo gets Ryan Miller for Mike Wilson
Here is a trade that could very easily have been one nobody remembered for any reason. At the 1999 deadline Buffalo sent defenseman Mike Wilson to the Florida Panthers for defenseman Rhett Warrener and a fifth-round draft pick in 1999. Buffalo used that pick to select goalie Ryan Miller, one of only two goalies in the entire class (Craig Anderson being the other) to have any sort of significant NHL career. He was a major part of Buffalo's back-to-back trips to conference finals in 2006 and '07 and an Olympic silver medalist in 2010.
