The value of the OP is soo out of wack in favour of Columbus there's little chance the GM could keep his job if he passed on it. You can state you need more veterans which I believe is true, outside that pulling this trade off would absolutely be a big step in building a competitive team.
Dude, Kekalainen's job is already in serious jeopardy; that kind of hot take doesn't really have the impact that you think it does.
Consider also the long-term effects on the market if a deal like this went down. Suddenly we don't have Owen Power, First Overall Pick - we're attempting to replace the highly skilled vets we just lost by moving Owen Power, Recently Deemed Expendable By Buffalo And So Might Be A Bust. With similar concerns and hesitation attached to Savoie and Rosen. And with folks knowing that we've gone from "really want" to "desperately need" w/r/t skilled veteran mentors. We'd be obliged to turn right around and come up with a similarly unbalanced deal in someone else's favor to restock on mentors, only this time we'll be on the failing value side AND folks will have seen it coming and seen these guys moved before AND we'll be drowning and thus in a position for GMs to throw us anchors, so we're exceedingly likely to end up even more badly ripped off in the balance.
Or, in other words, from the Columbus perspective this is yet another instance of that well-known "flip him for what you REALLY want" approach that is a sure-fire way to fail badly in the trade market. We'd win that initial deal, for damn sure, but lose all the subsequent ones necessary to actually build a useful roster. But hey, we'll at least get to point to that one trade and say "boy, we sure got to make Buffalo look stupid that one time, yeah, didn't we?" And everyone else will smile and nod and point out how we're entering Rebuild Year 8 while Buffalo is actually winning playoff rounds.
Seriously, this stuff
always has to be needs-based. Always. Otherwise you
will lose long-term.
