The thing with trading any good players not named EP is it's just a shift of problems unless it's an obvious big win. You need a guy with the scoring pedigree of Boeser in your top six. If you lose him, you have to have a huge upgrade on the backline that overpowers the value Boeser provides.
It's clear that management had huge worries about the dynamic part of his game basically evaporating the last season even if his defensive game had improved noticeably.
This management team isn't secretive. It was obvious they'd been wanting to upgrade on Stecher for years and had their mind made up a while before we ended up losing him for nothing (as an example).
It was very noticeable that as soon as TT arrived and played five games, a lot of the accounts that I'd say tend to have a perspective eerily similar with what the organization's plans are shifted a narrative for a bit to "TT is a better fit with EP so we should explore moving him maybe". And, I don't think that was a ridiculous take at the time because they were going to have to pay him sometime in the next 12-24 months at the time and if they didn't feel confident about the dynamic side of his game returning, you can see why they did explore it.
People who acted as if Sekeres' report was out of left field and unjustified - that's a bit funny to me because other journalists either corroborated it or didn't deny it. It wasn't like he said "The canucks are going to trade Boeser" - it was that they explored the idea of it because they were in a bit of a crunch and felt maybe his salary could be used in different areas. They clearly really liked Toffoli. It was funny to see how quickly it went from certain posters being like "wow he's a better fit with EP/Miller and on the PP" to "well he wasn't a part of the team much in the playoffs or the regular season we scored a lot without him not a big loss" lol.
Also, the cap problems this team had became apparent as early as when they couldn't re-sign Boeser long term because of the bad deals on the team. That's undebatable. It would have paid off but now we'll have to throw him a huge raise.
They really should re-sign him long term. This organization has no long term stability ATM outside of Nate Schmidt. Get Boeser signed for 6 or 7 years and they should do it this offseason before he increases his value again. His career pace is that of a 33g70p guy over 82 games.
Also, in regards to the comparisons of the immaturity between Boeser and Hughes' defensive game early in their career, I don't think it's a great comparison. Boeser had effort issues and while QH does as well, Hughes looks overmatched in ways that makes this incomparable at the moment. I definitely think going bridge with Hughes is a lot more of a no-brainer than it was with Boeser. Boeser looked like a guaranteed 35-40 goal guy but the question was if the rest of his game would improve - and it has. Unfortunately, they backed themselves into a point where they were forced to bridge. Have to sign him long term now.