the team following the All-Star break if the Blues did not renegotiate his contract, prompting a negative reaction from St. Louis fans, who booed him loudly. The conflict was resolved on February 7, 1992, when the team traded him to the Boston Bruins in exchange for Craig Janney and Stéphane Quintal. Boston and Washington Oates' best individual season came in his first full year in Boston. He led the league with 97 assists in 1992–93 and finished third in overall scoring with 142 points. At the 1993 All-Star Game, Oates set a record by recording four assists in one period as part of a 16–6 victory for the Wales Conference. He played in his fourth consecutive All-Star Game in 1994 and again finished third in league scoring with 112 points in 1993–94. In a five-year period between 1989 and 1994, Oates was the second-highest point producer in the NHL. His average of 114 points per season over that time was second to Wayne Gretzky's 124. A finger injury suffered during the 1994 Stanley Cup playoffs hampered Oates throughout the 1994–95 season and required surgery at the season's conclusion. Despite the injury, Oates finished fourth in the NHL with 41 assists in a season disrupted by a work stoppage. In game five of the conference quarter-final series against the New Jersey Devils, Oates scored the final goal in the history of the Boston Garden in a 4–1 loss. The Bruins signed him to a five-year, $10 million contract extension late in that season, but Oates once again became frustrated with his salary relative to the rest of the league by 1997. With the Bruins struggling on the ice and out of playoff contention late in 1996–97 season, Oates publicly berated team management, saying, "You go on a [road] trip and everyone says it's a big trip. For what? So we can win five games because we're lousy and we get in the eighth spot and lose four straight and get embarrassed and then get shelled all summer? It's upstairs, baby. That's their job, not ours. ... Are we rebuilding? What are we doing? What direction are we going in?" Less than two weeks after his tirade, on March 1, 1997, Oates was traded to the Washington Capitals. In the trade, Oates, Bill Ranford and Rick Tocchet went to Washington in exchange for Jim Carey, Anson Carter, Jason Allison and a draft