There aren't many trades that happen in the NHL that sets one team up for failure and the other for regular Stanley Cup contention for a few years. Maybe the closest we get to that is the Matthew Tkachuk trade that almost immediately started this quasi dyansty the Florida Panthers are in the middle of right now.
But one other trade in recent memory is almost certainly a trade that happened between the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Colorado Avalanche.
After another embarrassing playoff defeat in the first round, the Maple Leafs -- led by Kyle Dubas -- were slightly panicking. Trying to find a reason why they keep on losing other than bad luck and not addressing their scoring issues, they narrowed in on center Nazem Kadri getting suspended at extremely inopportune times.
Kadri's multiple suspensions in the playoffs left a sour taste in some people's mouths and he was seen as someone who could not reliably be in the lineup during the most important time of the year. With that and some upcoming cap squeeze thanks to the new superstars in Toronto, he was dealt for defenseman Tyson Barrie and center Alex Kerfoot -- among some other extra pieces in the deal.
With Barrie's retirement from professional hockey there is no time like the present to really dive into why this deal that happened over six years ago, really set the table for what we were going to experience in Toronto.
Immediately, while it was tough to trade a homegrown center like Kadri, it was seen as some sort of positive trade to make for Toronto. They got an offensive defenseman who has been scoring consistently with the Avalanche, plus a center that once held some potential and is now a possible replacement for Kadri on the third line. Nazem Kadri as a third-line center underneath Auston Matthews and John Tavares was a luxury and this deal made sense in a vacuum.
It was one of those trades that just caused you to pause and try to talk through the reasons. Maybe it was a big cloud of copium settling down on top of Leafs fans or frustration at Kadri for missing playoff games once again, but it wasn't as controversial a trade at the time.
Barrie had some solid moments in Toronto -- namely, being someone other than Morgan Rielly that could actually skate with some purpose up the ice -- but it was all undone when his tenure as a Leaf lasted just one single season. He swiftly left the Blue and White and just one year after being traded to the Maple Leafs, went to go sign with the Edmonton Oilers.
And all while that was happening, Nazem Kadri was recovering after a lengthy run in the playoffs with a dominant Avalanche team.
For the next few years, Toronto would try to make Alex Kerfoot -- the last remaining bit of that trade -- work as an offensive contributor. His peak would come in the 2021-22 season, where he managed to score 13 goals and 51 points, when he was able to get more of a spotlight alongside the Leafs' stars. But it all seemed unnatural for him -- Kerfoot wouldn't score consistently and he only was able to earn some more points thanks to the players he played with doing most of the work in the offensive zone. That is not a Kadri replacement at all.
Thanks to that, the Leafs continued to experience misery in the postseason and after that same career-year for Kerfoot that resulted in nothing, Kadri and the Avalanche were hoisting the Stanley Cup over their heads.
Kadri would leave the Avalanche after winning the Cup in 2022 and would sign a significant seven-year deal with the Calgary Flames. Cashing in on that success and then being a team's true top center option and not just second fiddle next to some of the best players in the world, Kadri would just keep on scoring. And now as he enters his mid-30s, is a very solid top-six center that almost every single team would love to have on their roster.
And the Leafs, well, have nothing. Heck, we're dreaming of them re-acquiring Kadri and paying a decently sized price to get him back in Toronto for his twilight years.
It's just another trade that caused one team to find their last piece of the puzzle to win a Stanley Cup, and leave the Maple Leafs without the one they needed the most to win at least a couple playoff rounds.