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*Jayba1t* · 04-27-2025, 11:11 PM

How the Seattle-Toronto Jack Kanoff Trade helped Seattle and Others (Winnipeg? San Francisco? Buffalo?) Win a Championship(s)

The Jack Kanoff Trade
@By-Tor's last article regarding the Magnus Liljestrom to Magnus Liljestrom trade tree was a very interesting read and I figured I should try and find some similarly interesting trees that can rival that. I really liked the way he formatted his media piece so I'll try to present something similar. This also took me around 8 hours to fully research, piece together and draw up the diagram for the following trades.

I don't think this particular trade tree isn't the longest or most impressive in terms of trades, duration or total players involved, but it's the one that hits closest to home for me personally. It all starts off with the Jack Kanoff trade, which happened between @notorioustig, of the Seattle Argonauts, and @ml002, of the Toronto North Stars on September 15th, 2020.

Toronto would acquire two 1st round picks and a 2nd from Seattle for up and coming forward Jack Kanoff.

In Tig's words:

"Kanoff was still a fairly young player and I knew he was a fun LR presence because I had him in Detroit. I figured it was an opportunity to get a young but long term piece at the expense of 1sts that were still years away from contributing and get a leg up on building around our S56 group that was on the way."

The Trades After
Yet 4 years later, the original trade cascaded into many others, and there are still active players that are a part of this trade tree in some fashion.

Here's the trade tree in all its glory. I created a Google Sheet shamelessly copied from By-Tor's again. If anyone wants to see the whole thing, link HERE to the Google Sheet

[Image: mA823Pt.png]

Why Jack Kanoff and the SEA/TOR trade specifically? Former Argos GM Tig is a bit of a known 1st round pick trader. He is ALLERGIC to keeping 1sts, so much so that during his entire reign as GM, from S56 to S68, he has traded every single Seattle 1st round pick. The end result was that in across the span of those 14 seasons, there has only been one Seattle 1st round selection they actually used on a player. That player would be current GM @efischermann's player Landon Fischermann, and a reason I picked this trade to be the first I'd unravel.

Another reason was that this trade really hits close to home for me. I was aware that my existence and fellow Seattle Argonauts legend Fischermann was a direct result of this trade (when Kanoff was traded out). I had been moved around a few times so I figured there had to be lots of moving parts that also found their way onto other teams. I'd also argue this trade was critical for Seattle's legendary late S60s when both Max Manning and Fischermann played heavy minutes. Very grateful Tig managed to turn me into a PDO Merchant where I found some success playing on Seattle.

On Toronto's side the trade tree is much more complicated but a handful of impactful players also found their way onto the North Stars, highlight by a confusing 4-way trade that resulted in HOFer Adam Barron play on Toronto, as well as a monster trade package a few years later from Edmonton featuring their S73 Challenge Cup core with Oles Kobliska, Eggward Elric, Jack St. Clair and Louise Martin.

However, a number of other sleeper teams also managed to find key or rosters players for their championship thanks in part to some of trades made. Looking at you, Winnipeg, and (kind of) San Francisco.

The Numbers and Some Fun Facts
Although it was initially a trade between Seattle and Toronto, 14 other teams were involved through at least one trade. They were 7x WPG, 3x BAP, CHI, LAP, HAM, 2x EDM, MAN, 3x SFP, 5x MIN, NEW, TBB, MTL, TEX and BUF.

17 trades were made on Toronto's end of the trade tree, which featured two 4-way trades as well.

8 trades were made on Seattle's end of the trade tree.

The first SEA-TOR trade was on September 15th, 2020, while the most recent trade a part of the tree happened was TOR-MIN happening on January 23rd, 2025. It's been 4 years, 4 months and 9 days, or 1592 days since.

The trade tree involves a whopping 102 different assets and approximately less of that in actual players. (some teams passed on the draft picks they owned)

@jeffie43 has two players involved in this trade tree, first with Jack Kanoff being traded twice by Toronto first, and then by Seattle to Buffalo, who were gunning from that championship in S60. Kanoff would go on to win a Challenge Cup with Buffalo that season. Toronto would eventually trade for his recreate Eggward Elric around 15 seasons later.

The oldest player involved, Adam Barron, was a S53 create, while the newest so far looks to be S81 Sazed Kholin.

A seemingly ordinary S78 WPG 2nd was first traded to TOR from WPG for Rhett "Shaggy" Carpet , then to MIN for a pick swap, then from MIN back to TOR for Oles Kobliska. That's right, the pick acquired in the TOR/WPG trade was traded to MIN then traded back to TOR later for another player involved in the trade tree, Kobliska. And Kobliska was previously acquired by TOR from EDM using other assets from the Stan Din'desque trade that got Carpet to TOR in the first place.

SEA traded a S62 BUF 1st (acquired in the SEA/BUF trade) to WPG for Pojo Biscuit and packaged him neatly with a S65 BUF 2nd that was acquired using assets from the same "root" trade (SEA/BUF) but moved around elsewhere to get Teddy Murphy half a year later.

Toronto North Stars
To no one's surprise @Wally has the most trades in this trade tree, standing at 14. They span multiple eras of North Stars contention, to rebuild, to contention again. Throughout those trades he's grabbed quite a few notable players:
Adam Barron (S74 HOF, Challenge Cup, Stevens, Ferguson)
Jay Sink (2x Challenge Cup and Ferguson)
Ben Der (former Toronto GM/co-GM)
Oles Kobliska (Challenge Cup and Razov)
Eggward Elric (2x Challenge Cup)
Jack St. Clair (Challenge Cup)
Louise St. Martin (Challenge Cup and 2x Stevens)
Filip Svatos (Challenge Cup)
Hugh Jazz (6x Challenge Cup)
Stan Din'desque
Rhett "Shaggy" Carpet

Seattle Argonauts
Seattle GMs Tig, Adamantium and efischermann weren't as prolific in moving around these assets but definitely made up for it with hits in the draft. Some of their picks and players dealt to them would end up helping them win their first championships in S67/S68, as well as a current player who's on the rise:
Landon Fischermann (current Seattle GM, 2x Challenge Cup)
Max Manning (S79 HOF, 3x Challenge Cup, 3x McDonald, Karpotsov, Khan, Razov and Richan)
Teddy Murphy (Challenge Cup)
Roquefort Cotswald (Jesster)
Jack Kanoff (Challenge Cup)
Pojo Biscuit

Winnipeg Aurora
Despite not being a part of the SEA/TOR trade to start, @Ace has somehow involved himself into this trade tree 7 times, adding players on all of those separate occasions. He too has managed to acquire many SHL mainstays throughout the seasons, including grabbing win-now players for their S72 Challenge Cup win, as well as finding some core long-term players too:
Dwayne Gretzky (Karpotsov, Mexico and Khan)
Sarah Burke (Challenge Cup)
Rebecca Montagne (Challenge Cup and 2x Honcho)
Manning
Carpet
Langston Hardison-Laurent

San Francisco Pride
San Francisco only made 3 trades with Seattle and Toronto, but drafted an important player and acquired another piece to propel themselves to a recent threepeat championship, spanning S79-S81.
Dominik Winters (3x Challenge Cup and Razov)
Filip Svatos (Challenge Cup)
Super Dupah

Not an exhaustive list, but here are some other players who have played or are playing SHL games for different teams, that were involved at some point in this trade tree, through secondary dealings:
Nathan Cormier (2x Challenge Cup)
Steve Harrington (2x Challenge Cup)
Ray Alexander (Challenge Cup)
Furious Chicken (Ferguson)
Ace Lightning (Ferguson)
Jaeger Jones
Jeff Larsson
Ekaterina Valieva
Rodrigo Banes
Dee Fence
Crazy Tomato II
Gordon-William Gibbles
Stavros Kondos
Sam Volta
Brayden Point
Leighton Oligny
Adam Joy

Hope to analyze more trade trees in the future, and if anyone has suggestions do let me know! Again this probably wasn't the most complex trade tree out there but I figured it'd be one that I'd be really interested in writing about.

And finally, a HUGE shoutout to @luke for helping me dig up trades that weren't publicly posted.

***efischermann*** · 04-27-2025, 11:25 PM

S61 Four Star Cup - Game-Winning Goal in the clinching Game 4

***Alaska*** · 04-27-2025, 11:37 PM

I won 4 Cups with SFP just as a point of order, but otherwise great job! Smile

Alex Winters (retired)
Matej Winters (retired)
Dominik Winters
S45 Jesster Trophy Winner
Challenge Cup Winning Goal Club: S52

***Ohtaay*** · 04-28-2025, 01:56 AM

Great write up !

By-Tor · 04-28-2025, 08:31 AM

AWESOME!

I never knew Adam Barron was with WPG.

Also funny how we do have a group of trade hyper GMs out there lol (not a bad thing, I'd argue it's a good thing)

Credit to enigmatic, Merica, tweedledunn, and jaypc8237 for sigs

***Wally*** · 04-28-2025, 09:18 AM

Multi-team trades are best trades... HO prefers them!

*Carpy48* · 04-28-2025, 11:19 AM

This one was interesting (and also very, very complicated), I actually remember how it started and never expected to be even part of it later.

**PapaSorin** · 04-28-2025, 08:56 PM

Heh, I was a part of a trade tree of a player named masturbation. So fitting. Specters

charlieconway · 04-28-2025, 09:04 PM

Quote:To no one's surprise @Wally has the most trades in this trade tree, standing at 14. They span multiple eras of North Stars contention, to rebuild, to contention again. Throughout those trades he's grabbed quite a few notable players:
Adam Barron (S74 HOF, Challenge Cup, Stevens, Ferguson)

To clarify, it was ml002 (i miss u) who made the trade to bring me to TOR. I think Wally was hired just as I was leaving for BAP.

04-28-2025, 08:31 AMBy-Tor Wrote: I never knew Adam Barron was with WPG.

Drafted first overall in S50! Though they were the Winnipeg Jets at the time. Barron, Reid Sutherland, and Magnus Liljestrom would all get their start in the late stages of that Jets team before the rebrand to Aurora (it was already in the works before I left IIRC)

I jumped around a lot on that player, but had nothing but good experiences with my GMs, who were either willing to move me when I wanted a change of scenery (Kez) or understanding when I wanted to move on at the changing of a GM (Wally).

---

Also that big trade moving Barron to Toronto saw Sarah Burke going the other way, whose user (Kyamprac) has a player playing with mine on Atlanta's first line now (Mia Lavoie)

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