Weird — I just finished writing about two different blockbuster trades that the Rock made with the San Jose Stealth, and they go and make another one. This time, they threw the Rochester Knighthawks into the mix.

The Rock traded Aaron Wilson and a draft pick for next year to Rochester in return for Stephen Hoar. Rochester sent their draft pick for this year to San Jose, who sent Luke Wiles to Toronto. So Toronto gives up Aaron Wilson and a draft pick for Luke Wiles and Stephen Hoar, Rochester gives up a draft pick and Stephen Hoar for Aaron Wilson, and San Jose gives up Luke Wiles for a draft pick. Got all that?

As much as I like Aaron Wilson, I think this looks like a good deal for the Rock. I don’t know much about Luke Wiles (since the Stealth have never played in Toronto), but from the numbers, he looks like a similar player to Wilson anyway. Hoar, who has one of the best names in the NLL (he’s heard “Hey Steve, your mama’s a Hoar!” all his life, and now replies with “Not until she married my dad!”), is a solid defender and transition guy. It kind of sucks to have traded an offensive star like Wilson to a division rival, but it may not matter. The Knighthawks lost John Grant, Jr. for the season today, so I guess the K-Hawks are hoping that Wilson will make up for that loss to some extent. You simply can’t replace a talent like Grant, but if you have to try, Wilson will do as good a job as just about anyone.

Paul Tutka wrote a piece in NLLInsider.com today about the moves the Rock have made this off-season, and when you put them all together, it does look pretty good:

In: Luke Wiles, Stephen Hoar, Craig Conn, Jason Crosbie, Chad Thompson (injured last year), Lewis Ratcliff

Out: Josh Sanderson, Aaron Wilson, Jim Veltman, Mike Poulin, Dan Ladouceur

The goaltending situation is a little dicey. Watson is coming off a Goaltender of the Year award, so no real worries there but if he gets hurt, the backup will be Mike Attwood (not sure if he’s ever seen action in an NLL game) or one of the two goalies they drafted the other day, neither of which has ever played in the NLL either. Poulin didn’t see a lot of floor time last year, but he was the goaltender of the year in the OLA this past season, in a league featuring Cosmo, O’Toole, and Brandon Miller. Might have been good to protect Poulin instead of Watson, but then make Watson a franchise player so Boston would be unlikely to draft him.

In July of 2004, the Rock made a blockbuster deal with the San Jose Stealth which came to be known to Rock fans as The Trade. Two and a half years later, the Rock made another trade that is still being talked about, but not in the same way. These were the two biggest trades in Rock history, and while the first directly contributed to the Rock’s 2005 NLL championship, the second was not-quite-but-pretty-close directly responsible for the two worst seasons in Rock history.

The Rock won the NLL championship in 2005, but struggled in 2006, beginning the season 0-4 and ending up with a worst-ever 8-8 record. The Rock management adopted a “What have you done for us lately” attitude with head coach and GM Terry Sanderson, and fired him within weeks of the end of the season. Former player Glenn Clark was hired as head coach, and Mike Kloepfer got the job as “Director of Player Personnel” (don’t know why that’s different from “General Manager” as it’s called for every other team, and for the Rock prior to this). A couple of weeks before the start of the 2007 season, Kloepfer made his mark on the team by making The Trade II. Kloepfer traded Colin Doyle and Darren Halls to the San Jose Stealth for Ryan Benesch, Kevin Fines, Chad Thompson, and two draft picks.

Doyle had played his entire career with the Rock organization; one year in Hamilton when they were the Ontario Raiders, and then eight years with the Rock. He won five championships with the Rock, and finished either first or second on the Rock in scoring every year from 1999 to 2005. In 2005, he actually led the league in scoring — the first player not named Gait or Tavares to do so since 1990 — and was named league MVP. Doyle was also named MVP of the Championship game three times, something nobody else has ever done more than once. Needless to say, Doyle was the offensive heart and soul of the Rock. He was also a fan favourite who gave his all whenever he hit the floor, and from all accounts, he was also a popular guy in the locker room. The trade shocked the lacrosse community, and even Doyle himself did not see it coming. Many Rock fans were absolutely incensed, and some even cancelled season tickets because of it. Management never really gave a good reason for the trade, other than the typical “going in a different direction” crap. When you’ve won five championships in seven years and then have one bad season, you don’t need to go in a different direction; you want to get back to the direction you were going in the previous year, and trading your best player away is not the way to do that.

Of course, Doyle wasn’t the only player involved in the trade. Darren Halls was a rookie who was traded to the Rock from Arizona only the previous month. Ryan Benesch was the first overall pick in that year’s draft, and was touted as a very exciting young player. I had never heard of Fines or Thompson, but despite the others involved in the trade, it essentially came down to Doyle for Benesch — the current superstar for the up-and-coming rookie. Perhaps the Rock was hoping that Doyle was on the downside of his career and Benesch would turn into another, well, Colin Doyle. But in 2006, Doyle was only a year removed from his MVP season, he made the All-Star and All-Pro teams, and finished third in league scoring. In short, he was not showing any signs of being on the downside of his career.

Doyle only scored four points in his first game in San Jose, but got nine assists in his second game and seven in his third (plus a goal). He ended the 2007 season with 81 points, fifteen less than his total with the Rock the previous year. Rather than attempt to be the goal leader, he seemed to take a page from Josh Sanderson’s book, and let Jeff Zywicki, Gary Rosyski, and Luke Wiles score all the goals. Doyle led the team in assists, and the Stealth made the post season for the first time in three years. In only the second playoff game in Stealth history, Doyle, who thrives in the post-season (did I mention his three Championship game MVP awards?), scored a goal and added ten assists to help the Stealth beat the defending champion Colorado Mammoth 15-14 in OT. The next week, however, the Stealth were bumped from the playoffs by the Arizona Sting. Last year, Doyle scored 88 points, and the Stealth won the west division, though they lost in the opening round of the playoffs to the LumberJax.

As for the Rock, Ryan Benesch lived up to most expectations, finishing with 58 points and was named NLL Rookie of the Year. In total, Benesch, Fines, and Thompson finished with a total of 104 points, even more than Doyle could have been expected to get. But Doyle, Josh Sanderson, and Blaine Manning made up a very potent offensive threesome, and losing part of that group really hurt the team. Call it team chemistry or whatever. Sanderson’s points total dropped by thirteen, and Manning, whose point total had already dropped by twenty five the previous year, saw his total drop by another three. The Rock finished the season 6-10, their worst record ever. They managed to back into the playoffs thanks to tiebreakers, but were soundly defeated in the first round by the eventual-champion Rochester Knighthawks. Last year, the Rock finished 7-9 and out of the playoffs for the first time ever.

It’s hard to say that the Rock’s decline from dynasty to also-ran was caused by the Doyle trade, since they were no better than mediocre the year before the trade. But things got quite a bit worse after the trade. Fines was traded away the next year, and then Sanderson near the end of last season. Benesch was benched for the last two games of the 2008 season, and there were rumours that he’d played his last game as a Rock. Nothing ever came of it, and Mike Kloepfer has since gone on the record saying that Benesch was never on the trading block and is a big part of the Rock’s future. However, no explanation was ever given for the benching.

While it could be argued (and I did) that the Stealth basically lost the Sanderson/Cosmo deal, there’s no argument that they ended up on the winning end of the Doyle/Benesch trade.

Quite honestly, I was not a very big fan of Colin Doyle during the first few years that I watched the Rock (i.e. starting in the the 2001 season). There was no question that he was talented, but he seemed like too much of a hothead to me. It always seemed like he wanted to get out there and fight someone (and my opinions on fighting in sports are very well documented), and the only reason that he didn’t was because his coach refused to let him, deciding (correctly) that he was too valuable on the floor to be spending time in the penalty box.

Over the years, however, he matured and became a superstar. The hothead thing vanished, and he now seems perfectly happy to let others do the fighting while he just goes out and scores goals. Something else that impressed me about Doyle was unrelated to lacrosse — during the national anthems, he stands perfectly still and even sings along to O Canada. I don’t understand why players have to keep shifting around during the anthems. Do they think it helps them stay loose? Then why do they sit down on the bench when they’re not playing? Why not stand behind the bench, shifting from foot to foot? And players who take off and continue their warm-up before the anthems are over really annoy me. Anyway, kudos to Doyle for showing respect.

The Doyle trade is one of those “I remember when I heard about…” moments for me. I am an occasional Wikipedia editor (OK, more than occasional, I have made over 7,000 edits to Wikipedia pages), and the day after the trade, I went to Wikipedia to look at my watchlist (a list of changes to pages I’m interested in), and one of the changes was to the Colin Doyle page, which I created. The only thing that was changed on the page was the first line:

Colin “Popeye” Doyle (b. September 8, 1977 in Kitchener, Ontario) is a lacrosse player for the San Jose Stealth of the National Lacrosse League.

“San Jose Stealth?” I thought, “Stupid vandals.” Vandalism is something that happens all too often on Wikipedia, so I was all ready to revert the change, but then I noticed a new paragraph that described a trade in more detail (i.e. who was involved). The next thought I had was not “vandalism”, but more something along the lines of “no fucking way!” and went screaming over to NLL.com to see if it was really true. It was.

In the two seasons since he was traded, while watching the Rock struggle to score goals, I came to realize just how valuable Colin Doyle was to the team. This coming season, the Stealth are playing in Toronto for the first time since the trade, so I’m looking forward to seeing Doyle play again, even if it is against the Rock rather than for them.

As I wrote about the other day, Anthony Cosmo was traded from San Jose to Chicago. Cosmo is a former Toronto Rock goaltender, and was traded to San Jose in the summer of 2004, essentially for Josh Sanderson (at least, they were the two biggest names in the trade). This was the biggest trade in Rock history, up until the Doyle trade of two years later, and was known to Rock fans simply as The Trade (just as Jays fans used to think of the Alomar and Carter for Fernandez and McGriff deal).

Though excited about having Josh Sanderson on the Rock, I remember thinking at the time that trading Cosmo would come back to bite the Rock later on. Despite the fact that Cosmo has blossomed into one of the best goalies in the league, I was wrong on this one. This turned out to be a fabulous trade for the Rock.

For four seasons, Cosmo was the Rock’s backup goaltender, behind the legendary Bob “Whipper” Watson. During most of that time, Whipper was the definite #1 goalie and Cosmo was the backup. Beginning in 2003, Cosmo began playing more often, and when Whipper got injured, Cosmo took over. He played in nine of sixteen games in 2004, as he and Whipper more or less shared the goalie job. Whipper was in his mid 30’s at the time while Cosmo was more than seven years younger. I distinctly remember one game where Whipper started but didn’t play very well and was pulled in the first quarter. Cosmo finished the game, and played amazing. I remember wondering if we had just seen the unofficial transition from the Watson era of Rock history to the Cosmo era. Beginning that night, I assumed that Cosmo would be the starting Rock goaltender the next season, with Watson serving as the backup, if he didn’t retire. Never happened. The Cosmo era, if it ever truly began, ended a couple of months after the 2004 season ended.

In a blockbuster deal, Toronto traded fan favourite Steve Toll, defenseman Darryl Gibson (later to become an all-star), two draft picks and a player to be named later to the San Jose Stealth for the single-season assist record holder and master playmaker Josh Sanderson, his cousin Phil Sanderson (another soon-to-be all star defenseman), and Rusty Kruger (who happened to be a good friend of Josh). It wasn’t officially part of the trade announcement, but it was widely known that the Rock “player to be named later” was Anthony Cosmo. It was weird that someone as good as Cosmo was a “player to be named later” in a trade, but that wasn’t the weirdest thing about The Trade.

The league was about to hold an expansion draft for the new Minnesota Swarm. Each team was allowed to protect a certain number of players and the Swarm would be allowed to pick one unprotected player from each team. As part of the deal with the Stealth, the Rock were obligated to protect Cosmo. Not only was this weird because it meant that they had to leave someone else unprotected, but the Stealth already had two very good goalies (Brandon Miller and Rob Blasdell), both of whom were protected. So the Stealth, essentially, forced the Rock to protect one of their goalies, allowing them to end up with three. This made little sense, as Cosmo started the majority of games for the Stealth the next season, with Miller and Blasdell seeing little floor time. Blasdell was left unprotected in the next season’s expansion draft, and was selected by Edmonton (who immediately traded him to Arizona).

Many lacrosse fans raised a Spockian eyebrow at The Trade announcement since Josh’s father Terry Sanderson was the GM and head coach of the Rock at the time. Some wondered if he gave up too much to acquire his son, his nephew, and his son’s best friend. But nepotism aside, The Trade turned the Rock into an offensive powerhouse. Josh Sanderson combined with Colin Doyle and Blaine Manning to make the Rock one of the most potent offensive lineups in NLL history. In 2005, Doyle led the league in scoring, Manning was tied for second, and Sanderson was tied for fourth. Josh set a new single-season record for assists. Doyle, Manning and Josh were named to the All-Star and All-Pro teams, and Doyle was named league MVP as the Rock won their fifth championship in seven years. In 2006, all three were again All-Stars, as was Phil Sanderson, Josh led the league in both assists and points, and Doyle and Josh made the All-Pro team again.

After 2006, the Rock went downhill quickly. Terry Sanderson was fired, and Colin Doyle was inexplicably traded to the Stealth. Without Terry to fight for him, Josh became unpopular with management, and he was traded to the Calgary Roughnecks during the 2008 season. The Rock finished below .500 in both 2007 and 2008 (their worst records ever), and they missed the playoffs in 2008 for the first time in team history.

But what about Cosmo? He became the starter in San Jose that Rock fans knew he would. He made the All-Star team in 2005 and 2006, was named Goaltender of the Year in 2007, and is now widely regarded as one of the best in the league. And yet the Rock traded him away — so why was this still a great trade? Because of Bob Watson. In the four seasons since The Trade, Watson has simply been outstanding. He made the All-Pro team in 2005 and 2008, and was named Goaltender of the Year in 2008 at the age of 38 — on a team that went 7-9. He’s had a couple of different backups (Phil Wetherup and Mike Poulin), neither of whom has played often because Watson is a workhorse. Trading Cosmo didn’t hurt the Rock because even if they hadn’t, he wouldn’t have gotten much playing time. The fact that the Rock pretty much sucked last year and the year before is irrelevant — their suckage was not Watson’s fault, and having Cosmo in goal wouldn’t have changed things.

The Rock had an excess of talent and traded some of it away for a championship. That’s the quintessential example of a great trade.