Right except that having two winners haven't crossed your mind. Tampa got the deal they wanted. So did the Canucks. In hindsight, would Miller be the guy you trade from that team? If someone offered a 26 year old 1st line winger on a good contract with term for a future mid to late first round pick and a 3rd would you not take the deal laughing?
Sure though I don't think you're accounting for the fact that TBL was in a cap crunch at the time and badly needed to clear out salary. That alone would and should have deflated his value. Think about it this way: if Tampa had had no cap issues and were in no rush to move him, theoretically we should've paid
even more than a 1st and a 3rd rounder just to get him. Do you think that would really be worth it?
Again, if Benning truly projected that Miller would be a PPG forward this year... why wouldn't he have been similarly accurate with others he struck out on like Eriksson, Ferland or Sutter who he envisioned as top 6 mainstays?
Similarly, LA got the deal they wanted. Benning never said that he got a steal or felt he "won" the trade. It was a deal that he was willing to make and it made a lot of sense for a team that have been making moves in hopes of making he playoffs. If the Canucks miss the playoffs because Benning stood pat then plenty of fans would blame Benning for standing pat. Just because a hefty price was paid doesn't meant that one side got screwed.
I think a fair portion of fans actually would've
applauded him for standing pat given the prices for rentals we've seen in the past week or so. We're not yet at the point where they need to be moving out futures to put the finishing touches on a Stanley Cup contender.
Given how we gave up a 2nd and a very good prospect for potentially 20 games of Tyler Toffoli who we won't even have the cap room to re-sign short of them pulling off some heretofore unseen cap wizardry that they've never shown to be capable of, I think the concern on the value of this trade is more than justified. A panic move like this, after finding out Boeser was done for the year, only served to make things worse.
We also know from previous transactions what type of negotiator Benning has shown to be, so this isn't just some one-off.