Raleigh, N.C. – It’s a compliment to have a trade named after you.
In Colorado, the 2002 “Drury Trade” represents an instance when savvy Avalanche general manager Pierre Lacroix went too far in his tinkering.
The deal that sent Chris Drury to Calgary messed with the Avs’ chemistry and karma, and the fact Drury is the co-captain of the Buffalo Sabres as they close in on a possible berth in the Stanley Cup Finals underscores the mistake.
At 29, Drury is a quiet leader who still contributes far more than what shows up on the scoresheet and individual statistics. He never will be the top-tier superstar who can carry his team. His hatred of losing – which helped make him ineffective and miserable at Calgary and even in his early days at Buffalo – is another reason he still might be viewed as one of those players whose value is situational. Good teams badly need him. Bad ones don’t.
“It’s different now,” Drury said at the RBC Center, where the Sabres fell 4-3 to the Carolina Hurricanes Monday and settled for a split of the first two games in the Eastern Conference finals. “I’m older,” he added. “In Colorado, I had those veterans around me. It’s just different.”
In Game 2, Drury got his seventh goal in the Sabres’ 13 postseason games, lifting a rebound of a Daniel Briere shot past Carolina goalie Cam Ward on a two-man advantage.
This run with the Sabres is Drury’s first playoff appearance since the Avalanche lost to the Detroit Red Wings in the 2002 Western Conference finals.
“It’s why you play,” he said. “It’s what you give for all year, and when 82 games are over and you’re not moving on with a lot of other teams, it’s hard to take. It’s certainly great to be back, that’s for sure. For anyone that gets in for a few years in a row, and all of a sudden they’re not in, it’s kind of, I don’t know, a wake-up call.”
On Oct. 1, 2002, he heard the Avalanche had sent him and Stephane Yelle to Calgary for defenseman Derek Morris, plus throw-in forwards Jeff Shantz and Dean McAmmond.
Though the organization drafted Drury in 1994, the Avalanche never seemed to sufficiently appreciate his indisputable and long-running ability to come through in the clutch. The video of a chunky kid pitching Trumbull, Conn., to the 1989 Little League World Series championship was shown about 1,312 times during playoff telecasts. When he had four game-winning goals in the playoffs as a rookie in 1999, and 11 goals in the Avalanche’s 2001 run to the Stanley Cup, it was a continuation of a pattern. He was not a replaceable part.
The Drury Trade would be more defensible if the Avalanche had held onto Morris. Instead, on March 9, 2004, Colorado sent Morris and prospect Keith Ballard’s rights to the Coyotes for Ossi Vaananen, plus Chris Gratton and a draft choice the Avalanche used to take University of Denver star Paul Stastny. Stastny might turn out to be a terrific NHL forward, but that’s a long way off. At Phoenix, Morris is becoming the player the Avalanche hoped he would be. Ballard already is a top-four defenseman for the Coyotes, and might be a star soon.
To be fair, it would be wrong to assume Drury still would be with Colorado. For one thing, the onset of the salary-cap era made it more difficult to hold on to every high-priced player. Drury made $2.93 million this season.
But it also is fair to say the Avalanche hasn’t been the same since he left.
Drury got his fourth career overtime playoff goal in Game 1 of the conference semifinals against Ottawa, and only his former Colorado teammate Joe Sakic, with seven, has more among active players.
“I knew he was that kind of player, with that kind of (winning) reputation,” said the Sabres’ rookie goalie, Ryan Miller. “My dad was an Avalanche fan, with Joe Sakic and Peter Forsberg, and ‘Dru’ was there. He was a great pickup for the Sabres.”
Drury won college hockey’s top award as a senior at Boston University in 1998, and Miller won it as a Michigan State junior in 2002.
The Sabres’ co-captain, Briere, 28, has developed into a complement to Drury. It’s a reach to say they’re Sakic and Forsberg, the Sequel, but they have similar pick-your-poison qualities as they center the Sabres’ top two lines and take part on the power play.
“When they told me I would share the captaincy with Chris – after all he’s gone though and everything he’s done in his career, not just in the NHL, but all over – I was flattered because they showed a lot of belief in me,” Briere said.
This even has some full-circle eeriness to it. Briere was enigmatic with Phoenix, and the Coyotes shipped him to the Sabres for Chris Gratton in 2003. That’s the same career underachiever who came to the Avalanche a year later in the offshoot of the Drury-to-Calgary deal.
Somewhere in there are six degrees of separation.
Terry Frei can be reached at 303-820-1895 or tfrei@denverpost.com.
