text: What he was before: Chara was a 24-year-old defenseman whose main claim to fame was being the tallest player in NHL history. He’d played parts of four seasons for the Islanders, establishing a reputation as a reasonably solid defensive defenseman (though he’d been a -27 each of the two years before the trade) without any offensive upside (he’d scored just eight goals and 29 points in 231 career games).
  The trade: The Islanders sent Chara, Bill Muckalt, and the second-overall pick in the 2001 draft (which the Senators used to select Jason Spezza) to Ottawa for disgruntled center Alexei Yashin.