What if the Bruins decided to trade Joe Thornton to the Ducks?

For a team that has often found itself on the wrong end of multiple blockbuster deals over the last two decades — the Bruins have fared pretty well since pulling the trigger on trades that shipped Joe Thornton and Tyler Seguin out of town.

Yes, the Bruins might have hoisted the Stanley Cup a little over five years after dealing Thornton to the San Jose Sharks in November 2005, but that doesn't mean that the return Boston secured for its franchise center has become palatable over time. 

Even if dealing Thornton allowed Boston to retool on the fly and hand the keys over to younger centers like Patrice Bergeron (and eventually) David Krejci, the deal that Bruins GM Mike O’Connell struck at the time didn't necessarily move the needle forward when it came to accelerating his club's rebuild by bringing aboard young, cost-controlled players with plenty of potential.

Instead, the Bruins parted ways with their 26-year-old star (who signed a three-year extension earlier that summer) in exchange for speedy 27-year-old winger Marco Sturm, 26-year-old defenseman Brad Stuart and 29-year-old forward Wayne Primeau.

While Boston's question marks surrounding Thornton's ability to guide this Bruins roster into championship contention might have had some merit, it's pretty tough to defend a deal like this — considering how much franchise players — and skill forwards in general — are coveted these days. And sure enough, while Sturm had a couple of productive years in Boston (and tallied some very important goals come the postseason), any production generated from him, Stuart and Primeau paled in comparison to the waxing Thornton put on the rest of the NHL after getting dealt to the West Coast.

By the end of the 2005-06 season, Thornton secured the Hart Trophy as league MVP after recording an absurd 92 points (2o goals, 72 assists) over 58 games with his new team. Fourteen years later, a 40-year-old Thornton is still in San Jose — having tallied 1,055 points over 1,104 games out in California.

Surely, O'Connell could have done better, right?

Well, it certainly seems like we have some validation now.

Brian Burke, who was serving as GM of the Ducks at the time of the Thornton blockbuster, took to Twitter (like the rest of us during this quarantine) on Thursday night to answer some questions from fans. One query, centered around any potential deals he wished he could have pulled off, led to this revelation — in which Burke admitted that Anaheim was desperately trying to pry Thornton out of Boston.

https://twitter.com/Burkie2020/status/1245851654802595840

The potential return that Boston could have netted, especially when compared to San Jose's clunker, was a whammy.

https://twitter.com/Burkie2020/status/1245851931240693760

Hmmmm — methinks O'Connell should have shopped around his franchise forward a bit more.

So what could have a potential deal with Anaheim handed Boston?



Even if Burke had a list of five "protected" players that the Bruins couldn't touch in a potential Thornton swap, there still was an embarrassment of riches available on a Ducks roster that was ready to surge to an eventual Stanley Cup title in 2007.

Let's take a look at that Ducks roster and see what's available:



So, who would the five protected players be? Teemu Selanne, Scott Niedermayer, Jean-Sébastien Giguère and Francois Beauchemin seem like locks. After that, perhaps Andy McDonald — who was on his way to a 34-goal, 85-point campaign? Maybe 22-year-old Joffrey Lupul?

Had Burke picked one of either McDonald or Lupul, Boston would have had a pretty solid consolation prize in the remaining asset. Or, if Boston was focused on the future — it could have hit a grand slam by looking further down Anaheim's roster. Even though veterans like Niedermayer, Selanne and (eventually) Chris Pronger defined that 2007 Cup champion club in Anaheim, they were also aided by an impressive crop of younger players— headlined by power forward Ryan Getzlaf. 

But in November 2005, Getzlaf was just a 20-year-old center, albeit one with loads of potential. Given the Ducks' mentality to win with their veteran roster at the time, perhaps a blue-chip prospect like Getzlaf could have been expendable, especially considering he fit the same profile as Thornton — a big-bodied playmaker (6-foot-4, 228 pounds) at the center position.

Hell, even a straight-up Thornton-for-Getzlaf swap would be far better received than the deal Boston struck with San Jose, especially these days. Can you imagine a young pipeline of centers in Bergeron, Krejci and Getzlaf (965 points in 1,053 career games) for the next decade-plus?



And even if Burke made the prudent decision to protect a 20-year-old Getzlaf and bank on his contributions further down the road, Boston still had a slew of young forwards to choose from. Other than Lupul, how about, say, a 20-year-old Corey Perry?

Yep, the same Perry that won the Hart Trophy as league MVP in 2011, averaged 31.7 goals per season in his first 10 full NHL campaigns and would have earned the approval of many TD Garden crowds with his physical, power-forward profile.

Feel miserable yet?

And again, that was going to be just one piece of Burke's offer — which also included another roster player, a prospect and a first-round pick. While it would seem like a strrrrrreeetch that the Ducks would have parted ways with their blue chipper in Bobby Ryan at the time, adding another prospect alongside an NHL regular and a youngster like Getzlaf, Perry or Lupul would have already sweetened an already appealing pot.

Another first-round pick for the Bruins to work with in 2006 or beyond would have been the icing on the cake.

Let's just say Anaheim surrendered its first-rounder in 2006 — a draft in which Boston selected Phil Kessel with the fifth overall pick. Had Boston snagged the Ducks' selection, the Bruins would have also had the chance to make another selection in the late teens/mid-'20s — with prospects like Claude Giroux (22nd overall to the Flyers), Semyon Varlamov (23rd overall to the Capitals) and Nick Foligno (28th overall to the Senators) all up for grabs.

Boasting two first-round picks also could have given new B's GM Jeff Gorton some major trade capital to toss around. Let's not forget, as the video below shows, that Gorton and the Bruins were desperately trying to move up in the first round in order to draft center Nicklas Bäckström — who went just a pick earlier (fourth overall) to Washington. At the time, Gorton offered both the fifth overall pick and the 37th overall pick to then Caps GM George McPhee in order to move up.



McPhee didn't bite — and drafted a star pivot in Bäckström that has won a Cup and tallied 927 points in 956 career games in Washington. But could McPhee have been enticed if Boston included Anaheim's first-rounder in the package?

Let's say McPhee goes for it. All of the sudden, a Bruins/Ducks deal centered around Thornton could have had Boston securing a couple of young prospects on their way to stardom in Getzlaf/Perry and Bäckström —along with whatever prospect and other NHL player Burke was willing to deal. Don't forget that the 2006 NHL Draft also set up Boston for the future with the selections of Milan Lucic and Brad Marchand in the second and third rounds, respectively.

Sigh.

Of course, Boston still did pretty well for itself during the 2006 offseason. Even in wake of the subpar return for Thornton, Boston spent big the following summer by bringing in Zdeno Chara and Marc Savard. The rest was history.

Of course, you could make the argument that Boston would still have had plenty of cap space available to sign these two free agents had they invested in the future by taking the Ducks' offer instead of San Jose's. But even if Sturm, Stuart and Primeau paled in comparison to what players like Getzlaf, Perry or Bäckström would have provided — they still left plenty of fingerprints on what was eventually a championship roster for Boston in 2011.

Stuart and Primeau, in particular, generated quite the domino effect when Boston opted to deal them again a little over a year later — with the Bruins acquiring Andrew Ference and Chuck Kobasew in a deal with the Flames back in February 2007. While Ference became a regular on Boston's blue line for seven seasons (including Cup runs in 2011 and 2013), Kobasew was dealt to the Wild in October 2009 in exchange for Craig Weller and a second-round pick. Weller was later included in a package that allowed Boston to pry Dennis Seidenberg out of Florida in March 2010.

So, in the end, I guess the Bruins don't have too much to complain about when it comes to the Thornton mega-deal. But it certainly makes for a fascinating "what if" scenario during what was a transformative couple of seasons for the Original Six club.