Based on what I heard Roy wanted to move Duchene for Chabot+Zibby when he still could've signed Radulov from the KHL with the money being opened up by that and the other trade he had worked out. And Radu came over to the KHL more than half a year before Duchene made his request around the Holidays...the Duchene part of which has made it to the public since we first heard about it, so on that part it's not just what I've been told.
That's where I'm getting Duchene being shopped before his request. Joe may not have pulled the trigger and been shopping him after Patrick walked, but Patrick tried to trade him before leaving & Sakic kept kicking the tires on those talks.
I get that as an explanation for why Roy kept giving Barrie big minutes. What I'm asking is why did Patrick ever play Barrie enough for him to have built up enough trade value for us to worry about destroying it, if he really never thought Barrie was anything more than a bottom pairing D in the first place? Why did he give him massive minutes before he had any trade value to worry about? He couldn't have been trying to pump up Barrie's trade value since Tyson's rookie season, could he?
And there won't be any proper "evidence" of this until we get better local press to someday pull it out of the organization, cause I'm not about to start posting the messages I got...if I could even still find them after all the trade talks I've had in the mock offseason we're doing
...as, I have to assume that, keeping my mouth shut about the details of these things until the folks who told them to me mention them, is part of why I kept getting those details during the Roykic explosion, Duchene-saga & ROR-saga before that and why those posters responded to my questions.
I know RL can confirm hearing similar stuff about the Roykic fallout, as I remember PMing with him about that, but I don't think you'll get the kind of "evidence" you're looking for out of him either *shrug*