Benn was a problem at the beginning of the year but he has played well in the last month ish. I would of protected Beaulieu and I was on record saying this back when. Beaulieu is a good young defenseman and has the size/skating/sill combo. Yeah, he has not put it all together yet but he is still young and is a decent puck mover. We went from losing a possible one of (Beaulieu, Benn, Emelin) to losing two of them.
Habs are just having an off year and the faster we realize that we need to take a few small steps back so we can take a big step forward in a few years, the better we will be. The pressure to create a team from free agency and trades over the last 6 years while we typically drafted in the 25+ range is insane. Combine this to the fact that we had one of the worse 4 years of drafting from 2008 - 2011 and it should not be a surprise that we are in the position we are in today.