The trade Rangers’ Stanley Cup-winning GM regrets most: ‘That was a disaster’
There’s not a general manager in professional sports — much less the NHL — that gets it right with trades 100 percent of the time. That includes a certain former New York Rangers GM who swung monster deals to land superstars like Mark Messier, Mike Gartner and Bernie Nicholls early in the 1990s, and engineered three key moves at the 1994 trade deadline to secure a Stanley Cup championship.
But there is one trade among all others that Neil Smith regrets making the most.
On March 14, 1996, just days before the NHL Trade Deadline and two years after helping the Rangers win their only Stanley Cup championship since 1940, Smith engineered a massive deal with the Los Angeles Kings that he recenlty told Forever Blueshirts “was a disaster.”
The Rangers acquired Marty McSorley, Jari Jurri and Shane Churla from the Kings in exchange for Ray Ferraro, Mattias Norstrom, Ian Laperriere, Nathan LaFayette and a fourth-round pick in the 1997 draft.
“That was a disaster,” Smith said on the Rink Rap podcast. “I can explain why we did it and I can explain it to myself but it’s still one of those ones where even though you can explain it, you’re the guy that did it. So, it’s not like you can weasel out of the blame.”
Seeking toughness and grit, the Rangers targeted McSorley, then 32, a two-time Stanley Cup winner with the Edmonton Oilers, who provided protection for Wayne Gretzky both with the Oilers and Kings. That McSorley was friends with respected Rangers veterans Mark Messier and Kevin Lowe didn’t hurt either.
Churla was another rugged player, who two years before totaled 333 penalty minutes with the Dallas Stars.
And Kurri was a five-time Cup winner, well on his way to 601 NHL goals and a spot in the Hockey Hall of Fame. The problem in 1996 was that Kurri was turning 36, still a solid two-way player but no longer the superstar he’d been earlier in his career.
“Mark and Kevin Lowe were telling me that in ’95 Philadelphia manhandled us in four straight, the year after we won the Stanley Cup, with [Eric] Lindros and the Legion of Doom. So, ‘we’ve got to get tougher. We’ve got to get Marty,'” Smith explained. “So, I was like ‘OK if that’s what you think you need.’ And Colin Campbell was the coach and I knew he would love Jari Kurri because Kurri was such an all-around great defensive player, still had some offensive touch, but really a disciplined player. He was a Steve Larmer type of guy.
“So, I made that deal.”
And regretted it for years to come, for multiple reasons.
McSorley played all of nine games with the Rangers and was minus-6 with 21 penalty minutes after the trade. He was a complete non-factor in the Stanley Cup Playoffs that spring, appearing in four of 11 games. The Rangers defeated the Montreal Canadiens in six games and lost to the Pittsburgh Penguins in five that spring.
“Neither team was a big, physical team,” Smith said of the miscalculation. “It wasn’t because of toughness that we lost (in the playoffs) because they weren’t so tough.”
Kurri had one goal and five points in 14 regular-season games. He perked up in the postseason with three goals and eight points in 11 games. But he was not a difference maker and was gone by the start of the next season, as was McSorley. Churla grinded out one more season in New York before retiring.
But that’s only half of the story.
Related: Neil Smith believes Rangers ‘set up’ to land playoff spot, but there’s a catch
Neil Smith laments 1996 trade that backfired on Rangers: ‘I do regret that one’
Norstrom, 24 at the time of the trade and struggling to land a regular role on the Rangers defense corps, played 12 seasons for the Kings and was their captain from 2001-07. Laperriere went on to play over 1,000 games through the 2009-10 season for several NHL teams as a feisty pest of a forward. Ferraro, a veteran center had 25 goals in 65 games with the Rangers before the trade and played six more seasons in the NHL.
“The coaches weren’t playing Norstrom, he was sitting out most of the time,” Smith recalled. “I loved Laperriere the way he played game. And Ray Ferraro, we had signed him in the summer and to be honest there were some people on the ice that thought Ray wasn’t the greatest contributor on the team.
“So, we put that deal together and in hindsight it didn’t work out. So, I do regret that one.”
Interestingly, the Rangers went on a nice run the following year in the 1997 playoffs, after signing Wayne Gretzky the previous summer. They knocked off old friend John Vanbiesbrouck and the Florida Panthers in five games in the first round and then took out the New Jersey Devils in five the second round.
Then, Smith’s worst fear came true, albeit a year later than expected. The Rangers played the Flyers in the Eastern Conference Final and lost to Lindros and the Legion of Doom in five games.
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