Bad trades for LA

This is why I love my Google Reader news feeds. I find stuff I would have never seen otherwise. This comes courtesy of the examiner.com, which has some weird relationship to the San Francisco Examiner, a once proud publication that was famous for being run by William Randolph Hearst, he of "yellow journalism" and starting the Spanish-American War fame.¹ Several years ago, the Hearst Corp sold the Examiner in order to buy the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Examiner has since become a crappy tabloid that is given away for free on BART.

Anyway, the online site sometimes does have some interesting, if somewhat random, gems.

Five in-season Trades the Kings Would Like Back:

....March 11, 2003 – Acquired Sean Avery, Maxim Kuznetsov, a 2003 first round pick and a 2004 second round pick from Detroit in exchange for Mathieu Schneider. Acquired Tim Gleason from Ottawa in exchange for Bryan Smolinski. As a player, Dave Taylor was an intelligent and crafty player, who used his hockey IQ to maximum capabilities. As a general manager, well, sometimes the results weren’t what he hoped for. This date was one that didn’t work out well at all for the club. Smolinski helped the Senators reach the conference finals that season, and eventually the Stanley Cup Finals in 2007. Schneider helped the Red Wings compete in the playoffs over the next several years. In return, Avery was a divisive and toxic presence in the locker room, the two picks (one traded away, the other Jeff Tambellini) didn’t exactly work out, and Kuznetsov last just a season and a half...

¹Ok, so he didn't really start the war, but he is credited for being one of the single most important factors in the United States' entrance into the conflict by inflaming American opinions of the Spanish by publishing sensational accounts and images (created by famed artist Frederic Remington) of Spanish treatment of Cubans in his New York paper in an effort to win readers from a rival New York paper run by Joseph Pultizer. You know the famous line, "You furnish the pictures, I'll furnish the war"? Yeah, that was Hearst. And apparently the renowned film Citizen Kane is based loosely on Hearst's life.