Hockey's steal of the century: Why the Lafleur deal might have been crooked

  The Montreal Canadiens pulled off the most brilliant deal in NHL history on 22 May 1970 which led them to get the most coveted junior player of his era, the future superstar Guy Lafleur.
   But did the Habs act in a sketchy manner in making the swap?
   Brief context: Everybody wanted junior superstar Guy Lafleur.
   He was sure to go first-overall in the 1971 draft.
   The Seals had a great chance of getting him.
   The Habs had almost no chance. Worst team gets first pick.
   Montreal's bleak, grey, gloomy, cloudy, hopeless landscape (hey come on! - Chimples) changed, however, when Montreal Canadiens General Manager Sam Pollock made a deal with Frank Selke Jr to swap first-round picks.
   The Canadiens' first pick in 1970 was clearly less valuable than that belonging to the Seals in 1971.
   But the Habs tossed in up-and-coming junior sniper Ernie Hicke.
   The Seals, for their part, gave up small defenceman Francois Lacombe to the Habs. He stunk and everybody knew it. He never played for the Canadiens.

Ernie Hicke

    Hicke looked like he might turn into something special but he never did anything of consequence.   
    Lafleur, who he was essentially traded for, became an all-time great.
   There were legit reasons that the Seals might have found Ernie Hicke interesting.
    Ernie Hicke scored often as a junior, tying a WHL record for scoring in 10 consecutive games.
   Plus Hicke's older brother Bill, a former Hab, was already playing for the Seals and had hesitated to re-sign with the team so the Seals likely thought getting Ernie would motivate Bill and maybe even create a brother act to fill some of their many empty seats.
   Plus the Seals were getting a 1970 first-rounder, which would become the 10th overall pick Chris Oddleifson, while the Habs had to wait a full year to get their player, which would, of course, become Lafleur. (Oddleifson failed to make the Seals team).

  So why is any of this sketch?

Frank Selke Jr.

1-   The Seals' General Manager, Frank Selke Jr., (1930-2013), might not have been acting in his team's best interests. Selke Jr., born and raised in the Montreal suburb of St. Lambert, was a longtime former Montreal Canadiens employee. After three years leading the Seals, was sick of the empty seats and made little secret of his desire to return to Montreal. Selke was more than just a former Habs employee, his father served as the Canadiens General manager for 18 years, from 1946-1964. So Selke's possibly-divided loyalties might have played a part in his disastrous trade. Charles Finley slashed Selke's salary four months after the trade, leading Selke to quit and leave hockey for good.

   2-  Habs might have infiltrated Seals ownership  The Seals, at the time of the trade, were owned by a New York-based holding company known as Trans-National Communications. The company purchased the team three months before the deal and finalized the arrangement a few days after it. But they soon defaulted on their payments and the Seals reverted to its previous owner, a consortium of 52 investors led by Barry Van Gerbig. In other words, the group owned the team only briefly at just the right time for the deal to go through. Habs General Manager Sam Pollock was a visionary and mastermind who might have engineered a way to influence the ridiculously-unstable ownership group to go along with this folly.

Sam Pollock

3-   The trade was kept secret Newspapers buried news of the trade without mentioning the most important part of the deal. For example La Presse reported near the end of an article on page 17:  "The Seals let defenceman
Francois Lacombe go in return for Ernie Hicke, a bright centerman who is the brother of Bille Hicke Pollock also promised the Seals a player-to-be-named-later in return for a player-to-be-named-later." The Gazette buried news of the trade in an almost-identical fashion. The Canadiens announced the trade amid a lengthy series of other transactions and made no mention of the swap of first-rounders, which clearly suggests that they were consciously trying to keep that element of the deal quiet.

Francois Lacombe

  According to local amateur hockey historian Danny Clarke, who has studied the Lafleur deal.  "That whole thing is still shrouded in mystery and secrets have gone to graves." Clarke believes that Pollock would be heavily fined at the very least if he pulled off the same sort of maneuvers today.