Within a six-day span in July 2003, four future Hall of Fame players joined three local teams.

Karl Malone and Gary Payton signed with the Lakers, Rickey Henderson joined the Dodgers, and Sergei Fedorov, a three-time Stanley Cup winner as a member of the Detroit Red Wings, signed with the Mighty Ducks, who were still catching their breath after an emotional seven-game loss to New Jersey in the Stanley Cup final.

Malone, Payton and Henderson departed without winning a championship. Fedorov followed them out of town on Tuesday, a 1,020-point career scorer and onetime NHL most valuable player traded to the Columbus Blue Jackets with a fifth-round draft pick for a raw rookie defenseman and a scrappy center who had the ninth-best point total on the lowest-scoring team in the league.

Sergei, we hardly knew ye.

Yes, this was a salary dump. Fedorov signed a five-year, $40-million deal, and even with the 24% rollback of existing contracts mandated by the new collective bargaining agreement, the average annual value of his remaining three seasons — the amount charged to the Ducks' cap figure — was $6,080,000. Defenseman Francois Beauchemin will earn $500,000, and center Tyler Wright is due $947,133. Duck General Manager Brian Burke will save more than $4.5 million this season.

"From our perspective, living in a cap system, this all makes sense," Burke said.

The marriage of Fedorov and the Ducks never made sense, not even in the days when teams could throw money at problems and didn't have to hire economists and lawyers to advise them on how to apportion their budgets.

Fedorov and the Ducks were a rebound relationship, forged after then-general manager Bryan Murray lost winger Paul Kariya to free agency. Murray didn't want to make Kariya a qualifying offer at the required amount of $10 million and gambled that Kariya would stay for less. When Kariya bolted for Colorado, Murray felt pressured to replace him with a star, or as big a star as the NHL could offer, and he thrust Fedorov into a leading role.

Fedorov, while blindingly talented, hadn't played a leading role in Detroit. Surrounded by a talented and seasoned cast, he was capable of dominating for a period or a game or a few games. The Red Wings were never his team, as they were Steve Yzerman's team and Chris Chelios' team and Brendan Shanahan's.

Murray, however, was determined to make him into something he wasn't. "We want Sergei to come here and be the top dog," said Mike Babcock, then the Duck coach.

And Fedorov said he was ready. "I enjoy the thrill of the challenge that I will be the leading player," he said the day the deal was announced.

He led the Ducks in scoring in the 2003-04 season, but the team missed the playoffs by 15 points. Murray resigned in June 2004 to become coach of the Ottawa Senators, taking over the NHL's most talented team while leaving Fedorov's suddenly ponderous contract behind for the Ducks to fit into a new economic system.

Although many players sought work in Europe to stay in shape during the lockout, Fedorov played only a few charity exhibitions that could hardly be called games. The Russian-born center, who will be 36 in a few weeks, had an outstanding training camp and frequently teamed with young winger Joffrey Lupul to create breathtaking scoring chances, but a groin injury took him out of the lineup after merely three games.

He returned last weekend to play against Phoenix and Dallas and demonstrate to Columbus General Manager Doug MacLean that he was fit and capable of helping a team that can no longer bank on being a novelty but hasn't yet developed the depth to compensate for an array of injuries to key players. "He was rusty, but I like what I saw from a skill point of view," MacLean said.

Fedorov's skill has never been in doubt. That the Ducks thought this was the optimal time to trade him, while they're mired in a five-game losing streak and stuck in last place in the Pacific Division, says they didn't think much about the rest of his game.

Ultimately, Fedorov became more valuable as an economic tool than as a potential leader, prized more for the money he would subtract from the Ducks' bottom line than for what he might add to a punchless offense.

Burke insisted the trade wasn't an attempt to shake up his fragile team, and added that he planned to spend on other players at least some of the money that he would have paid Fedorov.

"I'm not panicking about where we are in the standings," Burke said. "You're going to see intense jockeying for points and position…. I don't see any major changes we need to make at this point."

He was smart enough to see that MacLean had thrown him a lifeline and realize that he might not get another one. The Ducks' marriage with Fedorov is over. The test of Burke's matchmaking skills is just starting.