The Toronto Maple Leafs and Arizona Coyotes Trade History

The Biggest Trade

Date: November 10, 1990

Leafs Acquire: Dave Ellett, Paul Fenton

Jets Acquire: Ed Olczyk, Mark Osborne

Early on in the 1990-91 season, the Toronto Maple Leafs were looking to shake up their roster.

Sitting at an abysmal 2-15-1 to start the campaign, Toronto made a major move sending young star Ed Olczyk and consistent scorer Mark Osborne to the Jets, receiving defenceman Dave Ellett and depth winger Paul Fenton in return.

The trade saw Toronto send two of their top five scorers from the previous 1989-90 season to Winnipeg.

Olczyk, 23, was the major piece being sent out the door. Coming off of a 32 goal, 88 point season, he had a relatively slow start to the 1990-91 season. With four goals and 14 points in 18 games, the Maple Leafs were looking to cash in on his value while also resetting the team.

While Olczyk still had significant value, there was a troubling trend beginning to form. Each year in Toronto he had seen his goal total drop, from 42 goals his first season down to 32 in his third. His start to 1990-91 with just four in the first 18 games didn’t help that worry either.

Osborne, meanwhile, had just enjoyed the best offensive season of his career. With 23 goals and 73 points at age 28, Osborne was a prime sell high candidate from the Leafs end, especially considering his lacklustre six points in 18 games to start 1990-91.

From the Jets perspective, adding Olczyk and Osborne would be a significant boost to their offence. Winnipeg had just traded their leading scorer, Dale Hawerchuk, to the Buffalo Sabres that summer. Olczyk would come in and immediately replace his production while also making the team younger. Osborne, a bonus in the deal, would provide more depth up front.

So what did the Leafs get in this deal? The primary reason the Toronto Maple Leafs made this trade was to get Dave Ellett on their blueline.

Ellett, 26, was a mainstay on Winnipeg’s defence through the second half of the ’80s. Peaking in 1987-88 with 58 points in 68 games, Ellett became expendable thanks in part to the aforementioned Hawerchuk trade. Part of the package coming back the other way in the trade was future Hall of Famer Phil Housley, taking the number one position on the Jets’ blueline from Ellett.

The other piece in the deal, Paul Fenton, was similar to Mark Osborne in that he was a great sell-high candidate. Fenton was coming off of a surprising 32 goal season, joined for the Jets team lead with Pat Elynuik. His entire career, though, Fenton was nothing more than a solid third liner, and at 31 years of age, the 32 goal campaign was much more likely due to his astronomical 21.1 shooting percentage than it was a sudden spike in talent.

Overall, this trade made sense for both teams when it was made, though on the day of the trade it would’ve been hard to argue that the Leafs won while giving up a 23-year-old, point per game centre.

And yet, looking back on the deal some 30 years later, I’d say Toronto won.

Both Paul Fenton and Mark Osborne flopped in their new destinations. Fenton was traded later that season by the Leafs after just 30 games in the blue and white, while Osborne would be dealt back to Toronto in the 1991-92 season.

Neither reached the heights of their 1989-90 seasons again, with Fenton scoring just five goals in Toronto and Osborne picking up 32 points for the Jets.

Where the trade is really won for the Leafs is the seasons they got out of Dave Ellett. With 446 games as a Leaf, Ellett’s totals are greater than Olczyk and Osborne’s in Winnipeg combined.

Though the Leafs were terrible at the beginning of the ’90s, a swift turnaround thanks to Doug Gilmour saw them become a contender by 1993, where Ellett remained on the Toronto blueline. Throughout parts of seven seasons in Toronto, Ellett was consistently among the Toronto Maple Leafs top defencemen.

Olczyk, on the other hand, remained a high-level player for the Jets, but never reached the peaks of his early work in Toronto. Olczyk would never top 32 goals again, and his 71 total points in 1990-91 would be the highest of the rest of his career. He would spend parts of three seasons in Winnipeg before being dealt to the New York Rangers.

In total, Toronto got 476 games and 238 points out of the trade, including a major piece on the blueline when they got back to contention. The Jets got just 230 games but a solid 174 points from the two forwards they acquired but failed to match the win total they did in Hawerchuk’s final year in Winnipeg in Olczyk’s first tenure with the Jets.