Thursday, December 01, 2016

Joe Thornton

It has been 11-years since the Boston Bruins traded Joe Thornton to the San Jose Sharks. It was a trade that caused me to try and cancel my cable TV because I was so pissed about it (I didn't want any of my money going to NESN which is co-owned by the Bruins and Red Sox).

Jumbo Joe, the former first pick of the NHL draft was traded for Wayne Primeau, Marco Strum and Brad Stuart. Can you see why I was pissed?

If Thornton played his entire career in Boston, his 900 points would put him 4th on the all-time Bruins scoring list (2 points ahead of Rick Middleton but behind Hall of Famers Ray Bourque, Johnny Bucyk and Phil Esposito). Can you imagine if Joe Thorton on the front line had been coupled with Zedeano Chara on the back line this past decade? I can - that's why I'm still pissed off about the trade.

3 comments:

  1. your math is wrong. with the 902 points from SJ, he would be second, just ahead of bucyk. and he would be lionized in Beantown...

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  2. Hockey Reference has the Bruins all-time scoring leaders as Ray Bourque (1506), Johnny Bucyk (1339) and Phil Esposito (1012)

    http://www.hockey-reference.com/teams/BOS/leaders_career.html

    Granted those are the career totals for each guy - but I guess it's fair if we are going to imagine Thorton's totals would be all from playing for the Bruins then it should be the same for the other guys on the list.

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  3. Rick - in fairness to you. I didn't notice that Hockey Reference was using career totals (that used the 2 years with the Avs for Bourque for example) when I posted about Thorton.

    Thanks for the clarification.

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