#4- Dan Cloutier, Niklas Sundstrom, 2000 First Round Draft Pick, 2000 Third Round Draft Pick to Tampa for a 1999 First Round Draft Pick (4th overall)
June 26, 1999
This trade was a bad one for the Rangers, not so much for what they gave up, but for how little they got in return. Neil Smith traded a king’s ransom in order to get the fourth overall draft pick in 1999. With that pick the Rangers selected Pavel Brendl, believing that they had acquired a generational offensive talent.
Dan Cloutier and Niklas Sundstrom weren’t stars, but were successful NHLers. Cloutier played parts of nine seasons in the NHL and was the number one goalie for Vancouver for three years. Right winger Sundstrom was a former first round pick (8th overall) who had already had seasons of 24 and 19 goals as a Ranger.
Tampa immediately swapped Sundstrom to San Jose where he played three and a half seasons before being traded to Montreal. All in all, after leaving New York, he played six seasons gaining a solid reputation as a defensive specialist.
While the two draft picks the Rangers gave away didn’t pan out as NHL players, if the team had kept those selections, they would have had a crack at Brooks Orpik, Justin Williams, Ron Hainsey, Paul Martin or Antoine Vermette, all drafted in 2000.
As for Pavel Brendl, he lives on as one of the biggest draft busts ever for the Rangers. He never played a game in New York and was later part of the trade to acquire Eric Lindros from the Flyers. The highest Rangers draft pick in the post-expansion era had an NHL career that consisted of 78 games in which he scored just 11 goals.