Some of the stuff said didn't age well indeed.
My first post in the thread was literally just ****
Definitely hated the deal on first reaction, had warmed up to it a little after a few hours. In hindsight it was a pretty solid trade for Joe. Naz fits this team about as perfectly as you could hope, really added a new dynamic to the forward depth this season. And Makar pretty much completely replaced Barrie in his rookie season(At least at 5 on 5).
On the flip side, sucks to lose Barrie and it especially sucked to see him struggle under Babcock so much. He's such a likable guy and I really wanted him to excel with Toronto.
Especially considering how Barrie ultimately worked out for the Leafs and that he's essentially gone this offseason, I think it was a clear win for Joe because we have Naz for 2 more years as that pivotal 2C we have been looking for since Stas left pretty much.
Interestingly enough, Sleepy Joe got a lot of criticism for his not so sleepy moves last summer from a lot of people and pretty much all of them look really good 1 year later. Burakovsky for a 2nd + 3rd was a flat out steal, not to say Bura is a superstar or anything, but he's a legit Top 6 forward here that we managed to add to the team for cheap secondary assets. Nichushkin was heavily criticized as essentially throwing a dog a bone that could potentially take ice time away from some of our young stalwarts. In hindsight Nuke was our best 2-way player this year and nobody else was even in his tier, and the young stalwarts actually just aren't very good players.
The one deal that I still scratch my head at, was the Soderberg deal. We never ended up spending anywhere near the cap, and Soda would have been almost an ideal 3C behind Mack and Naz this year and now going into the playoffs we would have had unbelievable Center depth. Though especially in hindsight, I guess you could say the Avs were hoping that freed up cap space would go towards Panarin, and had we landed Panarin we certainly would have been a cap team this year.