I just wanted to add my 2 cents on the Stastny thing. Someone broughtup Legwand as a comparable, but with the assumption that Stastny would would brought more back.
Legwand was traded at the deadline for Calle Jarnkrok (B+ prospect, #41 via THN at the time), Patrick Eaves (pending UFA 5th liner, with time in the AHL that year) and a conditional 2nd/3rd round pick (DET made playoffs, so it was a 2nd). This was a deadline trade for a pending UFA, so the price was slightly lower than it would have been before the season. But he was making $4.5M that season, significantly less than Stastny's $6.6M, in addition to it being mitigated by the partial season number-wrangling for cap stuff (total cap hit for Legwand for the new team worked out to $1.152M, just 17.5% of Stastny's had he been traded in summer).
In 12/13 one of the players had 24pts in 40 games, and the other had 25pts in 48 games. In 11/12, both had 53 points, but one had 1 fewer game. Explain to me why the price would have been so much different? Age is the only thing I can come up with, but compared to previous seasons, it seemed at the time that age was catching Stastny just as quickly as it was Legwand. Cap hit strongly favors Legwand, which in my mind counters the full vs. partial season. I cannot see Stastny garnering much more that a solid 2nd+B+C; and most likely...exactly what Legwand got, so figure Detroit's pick. Pick would have been for 2013 draft, so figure Pracey would have taken...Detroit's actual choice, as it was an OHL forward...Zach Nastasiuk.
But seriously, how high a price do folks really think teams would have been willing to pay for a guy that scored less than 60 points the 3 prior seasons, under 50pt pace the lockout year that just ended, and was getting paid $6.6M? Any team that paid more than a 2nd for him PRIOR to the bounceback, would have been laughed at on all the forums, in the media, and in the GM meetings. That was almost 10% of the cap for a second liner that looked to be declining, and a team was going to give up prime assets for the privilege of making that overpayment?
That being said, it wold have been nice if they had done something similar to what Boston did with us for Soderberg. Trade his rights to STL for a late pick just prior to UFA. I think he would have been amenable to telling STL he would agree to a deal there, and could have gotten us a 5th back to replace the one we gave up for Briere.
