Chowder and Champions
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Boston Bruins Flashback: Trade that cost team multiple Stanley Cups

By Michael DeVito

1974; Goalie Ken Dryden #29 of the Montreal Canadiens defends the net during an NHL game circa 1974. (Photo by Melchior DiGiacomo/Getty Images)
1974; Goalie Ken Dryden #29 of the Montreal Canadiens defends the net during an NHL game circa 1974. (Photo by Melchior DiGiacomo/Getty Images) /
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Ken Dryden (Photo by Richard Wolowicz/Getty Images) /

But, THIS is the one Boston Bruins trade no one knows about that cost them several if not many sips from the Cup

Yet, there was one really, really, really bad Boston Bruins trade that makes the Thornton trade look like a win in comparison. Yikes, you say! How’s that?

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The one I have in mind is one few Boston Bruins fans have ever heard about. The fact that no one knows about and few remember this travesty is maybe a good thing. It’s really painful to even tell the story, and I doubt the Bruins have ever even mentioned this move publicly.

But the truth must be told! This trade is the polar opposite of the Esposito trade, but with even greater negative ramifications for the Bruins than the Esposito’s positive trade occasioned. Forgive me if I try to hold back a tear.

As you might guess, this trade happened quite a while ago and it happened during the greatest period in recent Bruins history. The Bobby Orr era.

This all-time cataclysmic trade occasioned a truly terrible cost to the great teams of this era led by the greatest Bruins and arguably the greatest NHL player (to have seen him was to believe it) ever, Bobby Orr. The terrible cost Boston paid, the loss of multiple Stanley Cups.

Yes, the name of the player who represents the worst trade in Boston Bruins history and perhaps in NHL history is Ken Dryden, goaltender, traded from the Bruins to the Montreal Canadians.

For younger readers who may not know of or even heard much if anything about Dryden and certainly can’t remember him, I can sum it up this way. In my opinion as a former goaltender myself, Ken Dryden was the greatest goaltender who ever played the game. Period.

I know there were the Patrick Roy’s, the Martin Brodeur’s and further back the Jacques Plante’s and others. But the king of the hill in my view was Ken Dryden.

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