One of the best storylines of the 2017 playoffs is the possibility of PK Subban and/or Shea Weber making the Cup Final after their shocking swap last summer. In honour of the potential for a top-pairing defenseman’s team finding success after trading him, I wanted to explore an NHL oddity that is absolutely unique.

Here’s a question for you: If I say "the best defensemen of all time" who pops into your mind?

It’s not a trick a question. I’d imagine most of you are thinking the same names: Orr, Lidstrom, Bourque, Leetch, Macinnins, Potvin, etc.

A lot of you, rightly, also said Paul Coffey. Good for you, smart, attractive hockey fan! Coffey sits second among defensemen for total points (just behind Bourque) and second in points per game by a defenseman (just behind Orr). The guy was great, and holds the record for most goals in a season by a defenseman with forty-eight goddam goals in 1985-86!

Plus, he just got to play with so many great talents. Gretzky’s Oilers, Lemieux’s Penguins, Gretzky’s Kings, Yzerman’s Red Wings, Lindros’ Flyers, Francis’ Hurricanes for some reason…

Huh. Interesting. The guy played for a lot of teams, didn’t he?

That’s not a small thing, either. Look at the list of top scoring defensemen of all time, and you see that those guys don’t move a lot. Players like Lidstrom, Leetch, and Bourque played all or most of their careers with one team, and even Chelios and Macinnis settled in for the long haul with each of their teams.

But you look at Coffey’s career, and he gets passed around like a condom at a high school party (attended by students in desperate need of a sex education class). The guy played on 9 different teams in a 20-year career (I’m counting leaving Hartford and coming back to Carolina as two), never staying longer than 7 years, which he did at the beginning of his career in Edmonton.

That’s abnormal. The only other guys at the top of that list who have a similar trend are the models of consistent longevity like Housley and Murphy — reliable offensive defenseman who were really good, but never quite at the top. Paul Coffey, on the other hand, was a three-time Norris winner who had five seasons with over 100 points! The only guy who comes close to his career pedigree is Chris Pronger, who at least spent 9 years in St. Louis before turning into a Cup Final mercenary after the lockout.

Ok, so Coffey was great and a lot of teams got to enjoy that. So what? Well, here’s where things get weird. You see, normally, a team trades away a guy like Coffey because they’re at the end of their rope, past their prime for contention and looking to rebuild.

Not Coffey, though. For reasons that defy explanation, Coffey only got traded by the best.

And I don’t just mean the best as in good teams. I mean Paul Coffey got traded by Stanley Cup Champions and Presidents Trophy winners. It was dynasties, powerhouses, and super teams getting rid of this guy. In the late 80’s and early 90’s, you weren’t a good team unless you had gotten rid of Paul Coffey at some point after he had just put up some stupid point total for you.

But again, so what? Good teams make mistakes and get rid of good players? They probably just regretted it afterward, right? Wrong! Those teams that traded Coffey away absolutely killed it afterwards! And I'm not saying that they just had long success. I mean that Paul Coffey got traded by a good team who went to the Stanley Cup final that same year, not once, not twice, but four goddam times in his career!

That’s insane! This guy isn’t some fourth line plug with weird luck! This isn’t some fluke like Nic Wallin scoring every playoff OT goal in existence. Every team who traded Paul Coffey got worse on their blueline for doing so. Didn’t matter — they were happy to have done it. For good teams in this era, the way to get over the hump to the next level was to trade away the best offensive defenseman in the league. Let’s examine the case history.

November 24, 1987

Coffey is in a contract dispute with the Oilers, who are fresh off their third Cup in four years. He is one year removed from back-to-back Norris trophies, and the previous month he and his buddies helped Canada beat the USSR in the Canada Cup. Edmonton begins their trend of deciding that having good players isn’t worth having to pay them and sends Coffey (along with Dave Hunter and Wayne Van Dorp) to Pittsburgh for exactly zero good players (although in fairness Craig Simpson was okay).

Coffey excels in Pittsburgh, scoring a billion points in five seasons and eventually wins a Cup in 1991.

But before that comes to pass the Edmonton Oilers do just fine without Coffey, relying on Steve Smith to fill his role after explaining to him which net he was supposed to score into. The Oilers go on the most terrifyingly dominant playoff run in in NHL history in 1988 and sweep the Bruins in five games (that’s right!) to win another Cup. Presumably, afterwards they take a lot of 1988 versions of Instagram pictures with Smith and the Cup, while Coffey sits in his Pittsburgh apartment listening to the 1988 version of Adelle’s 21 (something by Genesis, I assume?)

February 19, 1992

The defending Cup champion Penguins are struggling midway through the season. They send Coffey to the LA Kings at the trade deadline, for reasons that apparently boiled down to not wanting to re-sign him that offseason (Take heart, Kevin Shattenkirk), for Brian Benning, Jeff Chychrun, and a first-round pick. The trade also features the Flyers, which is important both for foreshadowing and remembering that fun three-way trades used to happen.

Coffey is reunited with Wayne Gretzky, Jarri Kurri, and Marty McSorely, which he probably loves because it’s like being back in Edmonton but without that weird smell (although Los Angeles did have a different, arguably weirder smell at the time).

Unfortunately for Coffey, the Kings lose in the first round (to some smelly team) and apparently they decide this is all his fault even though he scored more points than any other King that series.

The Penguins don’t skip a beat, and Jagr does this to the Chicago Blackhawks en route to a sweep and their second Stanley Cup in a row. Make that twice now that Coffey has been traded mid-season by the reigning Cup champion who then went on to win another Cup that same year.

January 30, 1993

Despite Coffey leading all Kings defensemen in points, Los Angeles falls in love with a young heartthrob named Rob Blake and throws Coffey overboard, sending him to Detroit for Jimmy Carson (there were other, not good, players in that trade), presumably so Carson can get a closer look at Gretzky to fully appreciate how little chance he could ever have had of filling his shoes.

It works out for Los Angeles, as Gretzky, Carson, Robitaille, and Kerry Fraser propel the Los Angeles Kings to the Cup final against Montreal. Montreal wins Game 2 when the referee calls a penalty on McSorely for his illegally curved stick, which was sent to him from Detroit by a Mr. Caul Poffey. McSorely privately vows to make sure that this does not remain his illegal stick-related legacy, and make that three teams who went to the Cup Final the same year they traded Coffey.

This time, however, it’s slightly more even as Los Angeles is defeated by Montreal. Coffey is pissed at the trade, but reestablishes himself as one of the best in Detroit, going roughly a point per game over his time there and winning a third Norris Trophy in 1995. He even takes a trip to the Cup Final that year while Wayne, Jarri, and Luc sit on a beach in California as the Kings miss the playoffs (actually, that may be more even than I imagined).

October 10, 1996

That Cup Final trip turns out to be awful for the Red Wings, who get swept by Claude Lemieux the New Jersey Devils, and the neutral zone trap. The next year they set an NHL record in wins but still lose to Joe Sakic, Patrick Roy, and their old friend Mr. Lemieux, who breaks Kris Draper’s face and eats a live puppy at center ice in Joe Louis Arena during the Conference Final.

Coffey gets into a very bitter and very public spat with Scott Bowman. The Red Wings look for a scoring upgrade and take advantage of the fact that Brendan Shanahan has cuckheld his way into needing a trade out of Hartford, and acquire him for Coffey, a first-round pick, and Wayne "No, I’m not Keith, I’m worse" Primeau. Shanahan’s goateed mixture of violence, scoring, and surprisingly subtle forward thinking about the way the game needs to change propel the Red Wings back to the Cup Final, where they face the Philadelphia Flyers and a scary lineup featuring Eric Lindros, John LeClair, Rob Brinda’amour, and some old defenseman named…Paul Coffey!

That’s right! 1997 was the first year that Coffey almost turned the tables on his weird curse. Detroit may have been in the Finals after trading him away, but he only languished on the doomed Hartford team for two-months before being paroled in the form of a trade to Philadelphia in exchange for Kevin Haller and some draft picks. So make that four times that a team has made the Cup Final the season they traded Coffey. But now, it’s his chance to prove he’s not just a bad habit that champions need to drop!

Or not. Detroit sweeps the shit of the Flyers, including a 6-1 victory in Game 2 in which they basically wait until Coffey is on the ice to score every one of their goals, presumably sending out Shanahan to awkwardly stare him down and hit on his wife after each one. The Coffey CurseTm comes back with a petty, shitty vengeance.





Epilogue

The 1997 Cup Final is basically the end of the good parts of the Coffey saga. He spent another year in Philadelphia, then part of a year in Chicago before "returning" to the Carolina Hurricanes, and finally closed out his career with 18 games on a pretty crappy Boston Bruins team.

I'm willing to bet there is a moral here about good teams not properly appreciating offensive defensemen, but unfortunately that moral falls flat when you look at the final tally of teams under appreciating Paul Coffey and/or really not regretting it:

Reigning Cup Champions who traded Coffey mid-season: 2 (1987-88 Oilers, 1991-92 Penguins)

Reigning President Trophy winners who traded Coffey mid-season: 2 (1986-87 Oilers, 1996-97 Red Wings)

Teams who went the Cup Final the year they traded Paul Coffey: 4 (1987-88 Oilers, 1991-92 Penguins, 1992-93 Kings, 1996-97 Red Wings)

Teams who won the Stanley Cup the year they traded away Coffey: 3 (1987-88 Oilers, 1991-92 Penguins, 1996-97 Red Wings)