I think the expectations were (mostly) right from the start. Maybe we were off the game in thinking it would be Foote instead of Hajek, but that's not that huge of a difference.
I think the main wave of disappointment came because of the tension on trade deadline day. We heard McDonagh was traded. Then, without hearing the other side, we heard Miller was also going the other way. Everyone's heads went to "holy ****, this is going to be absolutely huge" and then we saw it as a letdown because expectations after hearing the second piece went to Sergachev. Few thought Sergachev would come back for McDonagh. Some may have been hopeful for him, but knew it was a long shot. I think it was partially the way it was announced.
I see it this way. We traded two pieces who were not in the team's long term plans, both of whom are going to want long, expensive contracts. In return, we got quite good value in terms of future pieces that could be big parts of our future core. The real questions are: Did Gorton have any better offers out there? Did he think he could get better value by waiting for the draft?
The answer to the first one is an obvious no unless you think he's a moron. The answer to the second is a likely no just based off of history that proves itself time and time again: prices for players peak at the deadline and prices for draft picks/prospects peak at the draft. Imagine Nash & Grabner each had a year left on their contracts. Do you think Gorton could actually extract the 26th pick ++ for Nash right now? Hilarious to even think about. Both of those trades were highway robbery - as many deadline selling deals are.
My one wish is that we had played Toronto more against Tampa. You could see they were disappointed afterwards that they didn't get a chance to bid more after being told what it would take to get McDonagh. I don't doubt that Gorton's first ask from Tampa was Sergachev and Marner or Nylander from Toronto. It's just that talks heated up with Tampa and Gorton felt he would get better value by just negotiating with them as opposed to also Toronto - they had ~3 hours to do from reports. That was a judgement call for sure.
Having said that, I'm fine with the way things went. I only would've wanted to use Toronto as a bargaining tool - I liked Tampa's prospects more. Gorton knew what he was doing. He had a plan. He sold early on his other two major trade chips & got ridiculous value for them. TB had inquired on Miller before & from what SY said in his conference, it was NYR who asked to include Miller in the deal (knowing TB wanted him). This is the part that I wasn't super sold on. I know NYR wanted to get rid of Miller, but he's the one player who I think could have held higher value at the draft than when he was sold. It is what it is, though.
