On Tuesday, the Calgary Flames face off against the Toronto Maple Leafs for the first time this season.
Last Friday, it was the one-year anniversary of the Elias Lindholm trade with the Vancouver Canucks. However, Jan. 31, 2010, also marked one of the largest trades between the two teams, as the Flames traded their homegrown defenceman, Dion Phaneuf to the Maple Leafs.
In this edition of Throwback Tuesday, we’ll look at that trade.
Dion Phaneuf’s Flames career
On Jun. 21, 2003, the Calgary Flames had the ninth overall pick, using it to select defenceman Dion Phaneuf. The Edmonton, Alberta native spent two more seasons in the Western Hockey League for the Red Deer Rebels, where he scored 24 goals and 56 points in 55 games in the 2004-05 season.
Phaneuf finally made the National Hockey League in 2005-06, where he scored a career-high 20 goals with 49 points in 82 games. The following two seasons were just as good, scoring 17 goals each, along with 50 and 60 points respectively. His final full season was in 2008-09, where the left-shot defenceman scored 11 goals and 47 points in 80 games with 100 penalty minutes. He also broke two panes of glass in one period.
Starting the 2009-10 season with the Flames, he scored 10 goals and 22 points but on Jan. 31, 2010, the Flames traded him, Keith Aulie, and Fredrik Sjöström to the Toronto Maple Leafs for Niklas Hagman, Jamal Mayers, Matt Stajan, and Ian White.
Looking at who the Flames got in return
After the trade, Hagman scored five goals and 11 points in 27 games to finish the 2009-10 season, giving him 25 goals and 44 points. However, his play took a hit the next season, scoring just 11 goals and 27 points in 71 games. This was the first time since the 2006-07 season the Finnish native finished with less than 20 goals.
His final season, not just with the Flames but in the National Hockey League, came in 2011-12. Hagman spent eight games with the Flames where he scored a goal and four points before the Anaheim Ducks claimed him off re-entry waivers. He scored eight goals and 19 points in 63 games with the Ducks, before returning to Europe to finish out his playing career which came to an end in 2016-17.
Like Hagman, Mayers was at the tail end of his NHL career. Selected in 1993, Mayers had a successful career with the St. Louis Blues, scoring 71 goals and 158 points in 595 games in his first 10 NHL seasons. The Blues traded him to the Maple Leafs during the 2008 draft, scoring nine goals and 24 points in 115 games with the Leafs before the trade to the Flames.
In the 27 games with the Flames, Mayers scored a goal and six points, signing with the San Jose Sharks for the 2010-11 season. Eventually, he signed with the Chicago Blackhawks in 2011-12, winning the Stanley Cup with the team during the 2012-13 season despite not appearing in a post-season game. Mayers retired the following off-season.
The Flames also received a defenceman in this trade, acquiring White from the Leafs. Selected in the sixth round of the 2002 draft, White scored a career-high 10 goals and 25 points in 2008-09 and was on pace for another career-high, scoring nine goals and 26 points in 56 games before the trade.
White played well after the Flames acquired him, scoring an additional four goals and 12 points, bringing his season totals to 13 goals and 38 points, by far a career-high. The following season, White scored two goals and six points, before being traded along with Brett Sutter to the Carolina Hurricanes.
White’s NHL career ended in 2012-13, but he played in the Kontinental Hockey League, the American Hockey Leauge, the Federal Prospects Hockey League, and the ECHL, most recently playing eight games for the Norfolk Admirals in 2023-24. The defenceman was the final player from this trade to retire.
The most important piece for the Flames received in this trade was Matt Stajan. In the season before the trade, he scored a career-best 55 points with 15 goals, and followed that up with 15 goals and 41 points in the 55 games preceding the trade. He added another three goals and 16 points in 27 games with the Flames, giving Stajan a career-best season with 19 goals and 57 points.
While the Mississauga native never hit that mark again, he spent eight more seasons with the Flames. In 2013-14, he scored 14 goals and 33 points in 63 games, undoubtedly his best season as a Flame. In the Flames return to the post-season in 2015, he played 11 games and only scored one goal. You know the one, with the late goal clinching a berth to the second round.
Stajan’s final NHL season came in 2017-18, where he scored four goals and 12 points in 68 games. After, he signed with Munich EHC in Germany, where he scored 13 goals and 33 points in 52 games before hanging up the skates in 2019. Stajan remains active in the sport, recently joining the Flames’ development staff.
Although Stajan never found the success he had in Toronto, he became a useful player for the Flames over his nine seasons with the team.
Thanks for reading! You can follow me on Bluesky @ryleydelaney.bsky.social.
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