Last Year's NLL Blockbusters: Josh Sanderson

During the last NLL offseason, there were three jaw-dropping blockbuster trades. These trades didn't just involve very good players, they involved a few of the best players in the game. A year later, let's take a look back at these trades and see who the real winners were. I'm going to do this over three separate articles in the order the trades happened. The first covers the deal that sent Josh Sanderson from Calgary to Boston.

The Deal

August 13, 2010 – Calgary sends Josh Sanderson and a first round pick in the 2010 entry draft to Boston for Daryl Veltman, Jon Harnett, Kyle Ross, and a first round pick in the 2010 entry draft.

The draft pick chosen by Boston, David Brock, was released early in the 2011 season and later signed with Philadelphia. On the other hand, the draft pick chosen by Calgary, Curtis Dickson, scored 33 goals and won Rookie of the Year. Kyle Ross was signed as a restricted free agent by Toronto before he ever played for the Roughnecks, so Boston ended up with just Sanderson while Calgary ended up with Veltman, Harnett, and Dickson.

The Numbers

In terms of pure numbers, Calgary is the clear winner, since Josh Sanderson had a decidedly un-Shooter-like year.  His 20 goals and 63 points were his lowest totals ever in a 16-game season, down 41 points from 2010. Veltman and Dickson combined for 46 goals and 94 points, and defender Harnett added a goal and 8 points.

Other Factors

It could be argued that the loss of Ross and Harnett didn't hurt the Blazers' defense terribly, since no team allowed fewer goals than the Blazers in 2011. Since Sanderson scored more than Veltman, and the Blazers had a strong defense even without Ross and Harnett, you could also argue that Boston was better having made the trade than they would have been otherwise. Would they have chosen Curtis Dickson if they had kept that pick? If so, would he have been as effective as a Blazer as he turned out to be as a Roughneck? There's no way to know.

Sanderson is known as being a setup man more than a pure goal scorer, despite his nickname. But Sanderson's setup skills didn't seem as necessary in 2011. I was expecting Casey Powell and Dan Dawson to score bucketloads of goals and Shooter to get bucketloads of assists, possibly setting a new record. Powell and Dawson did have great seasons, but not only did Sanderson not set an assists record, he ended up tied for fourteenth in the league.

The Blazers and Roughnecks both made the playoffs and neither went to the Championship game, but there can be no doubt that Calgary had the more successful season. There's no reason to believe that Josh Sanderson can't come back and have an outstanding season in 2012 and if he does, the trade will look pretty good from Boston's point of view – if you consider that Boston didn't trade Curtis Dickson away. They traded a draft pick that turned into Dickson, and received a draft pick that turned into Brock. It could easily have been the other way around. Trading draft picks, if it's not one of the top couple of picks within days of the draft, is notoriously random. Your first round pick could turn into Brandon Ivey, who scored one goal in three games for Calgary in 2011, or it could be Kyle Rubisch. On the other hand, your sixth round pick could turn into Chris O'Dougherty, who played 14 games for Washington last year and was recently signed to a three-year contract, or it could be Brandon Corp, chosen immediately before O'Dougherty, who has yet to play an NLL game.

If Boston had known what the draft picks would turn into, the deal might have been significantly different, but that's the chance you take as a GM.

The Winner: Calgary

Next: Calgary sends Tracey Kelusky to Buffalo.