30 years after Penguins-Whalers trade: John Cullen, Grant Jennings on trading places, awkward meetings, rental evictions

Mar. 2—Thursday night, at 9:15 p.m., Penguins fans will probably be gritting their teeth through the latter stages of yet another excruciatingly close Eastern Division game against the Flyers.

They should take a moment. Pause the game on the DVR, and look out toward Hartford, Connecticut.

Then, with a raised glass, shout the words, "Thank you!" And do it 30 times.

Because, at that moment, it will be the 30th anniversary of "The Trade" which allowed the Penguins to acquire future Hall of Famer Ron Francis along with defensemen Ulf Samuelsson and Grant Jennings.

Two Stanley Cups later, Pittsburgh hockey fans still have the Whalers in part to thank. The franchise isn't there anymore. But the memory of that deal remains in both cities.

This week's "Breakfast With Benz" features a three-part series on the forgotten — or previously untold — stories and subplots surrounding "The Trade."

------

Former Penguins center John Cullen doesn't remember the movie he saw on March 4, 1991. But he does remember who was with him. And he does remember that blinking light on the answering machine.

"Cully, it's Craig Patrick. Give me a call."

The second message.

"Cully, it's Craig Patrick. Give me a call."

Then the third message.

"Cull, it's Zarley. Well, I hope you like Hartford!"

Then Cullen remembers looking at teammate Scott Young and saying, "You have got to be (expletive deleted) me."

Cullen and Young — also former teammates at Boston University — had been out at a movie with some friends who came in from Boston.

"We got home around 11 p.m. And my machine was going crazy. It was a 9 o'clock show," he recalls.

Based on a timeline provided from the Hartford Courant on the morning after the trade ... sorry, "The Trade" ... Patrick, Penguins general manager at the time, was calling to let Cullen know of his fate the night before the NHL trade deadline. Probably just as the opening credits of Cullen's movie were rolling.

Cullen was getting shipped to the Hartford Whalers with defenseman Zarley Zalapski and center Jeff Parker. In exchange for center Ron Francis, All-Star defenseman Ulf Samuelsson and fellow blueliner Grant Jennings.

"Absolute, total shock," Cullen said. "There wasn't one hint this was going down."

The Whalers were 28-30-9 and had dropped into fourth place in the Adams Division amid a six-game winless skid. The Penguins, though, weren't fairing much better, having gone 0-4-1 in their last five games, with their record slipping to 32-30-4. They were hemorrhaging goals at an alarming rate, 28 over those five games.

Still, Cullen was fifth in the league in scoring at the time with 94 points and was wildly applauded in Pittsburgh. He was lauded for keeping the Penguins afloat while Mario Lemieux had been sidelined until late January because of back surgery.

Cullen had 92 points the year before, and he had proven to be a valuable second fiddle at center when Lemieux was playing or a capable top-line scorer if Lemieux got hurt again.

Surely, he wasn't going to be traded anywhere. And if so, just not to Hartford.

After all, Young, who was just acquired from the Whalers in December for Rob Brown, hadn't exactly painted the best picture of playing in Connecticut and made Pittsburgh sound like an oasis by comparison.

"I was devastated," Cullen said. "Scottie was living with me. All that time he was saying, 'It's so great here (in Pittsburgh). This team is so great!' And then, all of the sudden, I'm going to Hartford. And he was, like, 'Oh, my god.'

"I had no clue. I know what I had (in Pittsburgh). I was very close with all the guys and we had great chemistry."

The next morning, Young would still be in Pittsburgh. The Penguins would go 9-3-2 down the stretch and eventually win the Stanley Cup.

And Cullen spent the next two-and-a half years listening to Brass Bonanza.

'Those are the guys with the defense!'

Jennings probably got word of the deal before anyone else in Connecticut. The way he tells it, Whalers general manager Eddie Johnston, who previously held that title in Pittsburgh, informed him that he was the first domino to fall in a series of layers to the deal and to expect some of his teammates to join him on the way to Pittsburgh the next morning.

"I show up at the airport. I see Ron Francis walking in. And Ulf Samuelsson," Jennings recalls. "And I'm thinking, 'Are these guys going on a road trip?' The next thing you know, we are all on a plane heading to Pittsburgh for a pre-game skate."

It wouldn't be the last road trip those three would take together. And I don't just mean the ones with the team en route to the Stanley Cup.

"They put us up at that place with the Ruddy Duck," Jennings said of what is now the DoubleTree hotel Uptown. "We had a little hotel apartment. They gave us a rental car between the three of us. It was a blue Cadillac. So we'd go get groceries at 'Giant Iggle.' And people would look at us when we'd walk into the store. They knew who we were. They would stop and stare. And they'd be pointing and saying, 'Those are the guys with the defense from Hartford!'"

"The guys with the defense," indeed.

The previous season, Francis finished fifth in the Selke Trophy balloting as the league's best two-way forward because his defensive acumen matched his 101 points. Samuelsson was known as one of the meanest players in the league. While Zalapski had gobs of offensive potential, he couldn't hold a candle to Samuelsson's tenacity in his own zone.

As for Jennings, he measured at 6-foot-4, 220 pounds. He provided size, grit and defensive depth the Penguins were lacking.

"I could tell, (the Penguins) just played a wide-open style. And it was kind of easy to play against. When we got there, we were the pieces of the puzzle that closed that vulnerability down."

Not that he and Samuelsson didn't enjoy an occasional benefit on the blueline now that they were on a team that embraced offense as much as the Penguins did.

"It was a lot of fun. It was nice coming to a sports city. Coming from Hartford, we didn't get the fanfare and loyalty that Pittsburgh had. It was a breath of fresh air," Jennings said. "I actually scored in my first game as a Penguin. That was kinda weird."

It was so weird that he wouldn't score again until a crucial goal in Game 3 of the Eastern Conference Final against the Boston Bruins, en route to the Pens' first title.

And his first Pens' goal against the Vancouver Canucks on March 5 didn't come without some uncomfortable moments earlier in the day.

Awkward!

Cullen woke up the next morning and drove to the Civic Arena. The timing couldn't have been more strange.

"It was about 9:30. The (Penguins players) are getting to the rink. I'm walking in. I'm getting my equipment bag," Cullen began to laugh. "Ronny, Ulfy and Grant are already there. I said to myself. 'My god. Do these guys really want to get out of Hartford that damned bad?!'"

Jennings admits it wasn't the easiest of moments for himself and his fellow former Whalers.

"The eyes were on us," Jennings said. "From his ex-teammates. They were all eyeing us up because they had just lost a good friend and a good player. We had some big shoes to fill."

But the situation couldn't have gone too badly as Jennings ended up renting Cullen's house in Bridgeville for the rest of Jennings' five-year career in Pittsburgh. That's until Cullen returned to the Penguins in 1995, and Jennings was still squatting there.

"I said, 'I'm coming back,'" Cullen laughed. "'You gotta get out!'"

Ironically, Cullen would end up playing a year with the three guys who came from Hartford in the trade that shipped him away.

"I wound up in a condo by the South Hills Village Mall," Jennings said.

But he wouldn't have to stay long. Eventually, Jennings moved on to the Toronto Maple Leafs later that year.

It was like putting a ring on my finger

Cullen was in Florida watching the Penguins eliminate the Minnesota North Stars to win the Cup in June 1991. He remembers a locker room celebration interview with his champagne-soaked friend Phil Bourque, who thanked him for what Cullen had meant to the team.

Cullen said, "It was like putting a ring on my finger."

Settled in Atlanta after a decade in the NHL, Cullen is a car dealer now with his brother. A battle with neck injuries and a victory over cancer under his belt. A Masterton Trophy on the shelf. And an award for teamwork and determination named after him in the IHL. Cullen's perspective allows him to accept how Patrick traded him.

"I've got the utmost respect for Craig. A great friend to this day," Cullen said. "It was a trade he had to do. It was very difficult on him because of the relationship we had. And how I was playing.

"The trade had been going on for a while. When they threw Ulf in, he had to do it. He told me that years later."

As for Jennings, he's an airline mechanic north of the Arctic Circle in Alaska. He's just getting back into hockey a bit with a 14-year-old who is invested in the game. Jennings just hopes the pandemic lifts in time to have a reunion with the Cup team.

"That's my big concern," Jennings joked. "When we did our 10-year and 20-year reunions, they were in August right around camp. It just depends what this virus decides to do."

Cullen should show up, too. Since he let Jennings crash at his house, maybe Jennings will let Cullen crash the party. Because it took someone as good as Cullen to get "The Trade" done

If there was never a Cullen, there may not be a Cup.

------

You can hear Tim Benz's entire interviews with both Grant Jennings and John Cullen in this "Breakfast With Benz" podcast.

Tim Benz is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Tim at tbenz@triblive.com or via Twitter. All tweets could be reposted. All emails are subject to publication unless specified otherwise.