In the early 80's Denver had a player, Tom Martin, who left school after his Freshman year to play Major Junior hockey in Canada. While at DU he was traded to another team for a bus..
Martin was playing for the University of Denver during the 1982-83 season, the Seattle Breakers traded his WHL rights to Victoria with cash for a used team bus and future considerations. In fact, the deal was really just Martin straight-up in lieu of Seattle having to make a down payment on Victoria's spare bus. The unconventional deal was made in mid-January 1983.
"Our old bus blew its engine on a road trip to Kelowna," Seattle owner John Hamilton explained to a reporter from The Hockey News. "Victoria had a bus they couldn't use and we had a player we couldn't use. Bingo."
2 comments:
Your second paragraph is slightly more accurate than the first, DG. Martin wasn't traded for the bus when he was in major junior.
Martin was 'traded' for the bus while he was still at DU in 82-83, because Seattle didn't think his retaining his playing rights would mean very much, as they didn't think he'd bolt from DU. I can remember all kinds of kidding he got from his DU teammates at the time...
Thanks. I edited it.
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