Quote:
Originally Posted by Rain Man
Back in the 60s or 70s, there was some George Allen team (Rams or Redskins) that actually traded away the same pick twice. Recordkeeping was all on paper, and no one noticed it until the draft when two teams tried to make a selection. Apparently it caused some chaos. I don't remember how they resolved the issue with the two teams, but I think they fined George Allen's team a 1st round pick the following year.
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My favorite draft story is a hockey one.
The St. Louis Blues were owned by Ralston Purina at the time (IIRC) and they were trying to sell the team. They had a buyer who wanted to move the team to Saskatoon and the board of Governors rejected the bid. Purina was pissed - they didn't want the team anymore, didn't have a local buyer and the NHL wouldn't let them sell it to the guys that wanted to move it. So their response was to decide to essentially decided to let the team go fallow. They were just gonna do...nothing.
They told the NHL "okay, they're you're problem now. If you want them to exist, you do it because we have no intention of fielding a hockey team next season..."
They just didn't bother to send anybody to the 1983 draft so the Blues picks just didn't get made.
It got even nastier. The NHL decided to reject Ralston's attempts to 'give' the Blues to the NHL because they didn't want to have to give Ralston any proceeds from the sale. So they just flat terminated the franchise and absorbed its assets. Then they effectively created a 'new' Blues franchise and sold it to Harry Ornst free of any encumbrances. And had Ornst not come to the table with a deal, the NHL probably would've just folded the Blues outright.
Three years later Ornst sold the Blues (and the arena) for an $11.5 million profit over the roughly $24 million he'd put into them.
It was a total shitshow.