actually there were fans from other teams willing to trade their pick (I think it was 7th or 8th for Monahan) not sure if GMs would accept. As for Batherson I had several Ottawa fans agree to Batherson and that Finnish D I forget his name, for Monahan.
obviously GMs might have different opinions but yes both trades I was called crazy by flames fans. Again more cause people didn’t know who I was interested in than anything.
hmm... perhaps you're right. Agreed we don't know how GMs think. But IIRC around that time, I think the reasons for not trading Monahan were combinations of the following:
- Other teams were rumored to not want him (injury history and risk well known?); supposedly Minny and CBJ wanted nothing to do with him.
- Monahan's value was considered so low, it wasn't worth the trade. Trading him that low would also make bad optics and also other GM want to lowball us (ie: Cammellari thing until Burke put his foot down)
- It might piss of his really good friend, Gaudreau... who IIRC was also kinda slumping around that time and just not clicking with others. Unless that was just more example of idiot coaching.... or both? IIRC, even Tkachuk was slumping around that time.
I was in the 2nd and 3rd point range. If we could get great value for him (ie: Lundell ish range) by all means, do it. But if his trade value was crap or borderline (ie: Batherson), I'd rather not end up with another Brodie unwanted situation (which would potentially bleed from Monahan over to a few other guys) if the trade didn't go through or he was basically sent to no mans land (ie: Gio, but unlike Gio, we had a choice for desination for our players). Like, the players on our roster understand, "Oh, he's highly valued and we need to rebalance the team. I get it." vs feeling like, "My buddy was thrown out like scrap at an e-Cycle drop off location.... I wonder if I could be next one day."
I think this is an important ish point. The end result is worrying that something like Bennett happens to more than one guy.
Curious also is whether we would have been better off with Pelletier + Frolik or Zucker (Rumored to be screwed up on the Flames side somehow).
Treliving has some interesting deals in place in the last 3 seasons that probably would have done reasonably well. It's kinda crazy they all kinda fell through. Brodie (Kadri NTC), Zucker (internal veto?), Stone (Rental? Ottawa wanted Valimaki over Kylington), Eichel (VGK wanted Krebs and likely played LTIR to expedite the move vs Flames needed a 3rd party to move cap).
Any one of these 4 moves likely is a major improvement to this roster in the way we need right now. Insane. It's easy to get mad in being the bride, but at least this isn't a Feaster/Benning fear of actually poking around the market place.