Agreed on all counts. What we saw last season, the extreme swings from great to terrible, was as much a mental letdown as it was a lack of goaltending/scoring. On paper it made no sense how the same group of skaters could play like two different teams from month to month. That's mental, and that's when you can either get back on track with good leadership or sink with no leadership, or the wrong kind of leaders. Habs kept sinking because there was no voice they respected dragging them back up.
Subban was my favourite player, but quite obviously he was disliked among his teammates. He may have been trying to pull the team forward, but they obviously didn't like his style of pulling and instead pushed back. It's a real shame and it's not necessarily his fault, but you can't allow that dynamic to continue. I'd guess that by mid-January the locker had probably become a cesspool of interpersonal crap, and the official leaders -- Pacioretty, Plekanec, Markov -- deserted their stations. When your leaders say "Screw this", so does the rest of the team. That's exactly where a guy like Weber has value. He's a bigger, more mature, much more talented Prust, someone who the players will actually go to war with.
As a hockey trade, this sucks. We lost the better player. Let's hope it was a good personality trade.
