I can see where you're coming from, but I'm not sure the logic holds for me. The cap moved zero dollars this year, the contracts signed are horrendous, which is pretty normal for UFA. That being said, it certainly wouldn't have been easy to replace him for a more reasonable deal, which is why I wanted to get rid of him in the first place. I'm not sure I care though, if the return is absolutely massive I give up our 'elite' D to balance out the scoring any day. Especially since I don't think Lindell is very good at anything, and maybe a guy like Hakanpaa can replace most of what he does for a fraction of the price. That's a stretch, since he's still relatively new to the league, but I think it would still be an overall gain if we added a talented top 6 player and gave up Lindell pretty much every time. Still mad that Buchnevich went for basically nothing.
I don't think D-men magically got more valuable because someone realized they're much better than forwards, I think that several teams lost their #4 D to Seattle, and it created a huge demand around the league for a top 4D, except there were 8 or 9 of them less than there were before for the entire NHL. Since Seattle also took contract money off of every team's hands, except Vegas, there was also an influx of cap space.
Unfortunately, teams are incredibly dumb, so guys like Tucker Poolman and Cody Ceci somehow got overpaid, not to mention the likes of Nurse, Jones, and Werenski. But all three have special circumstances, even if they are still absolutely awful deals. Then there's Ristolainen and OEL, some of the worst trades I've seen in a long time. At least Jones is actually useful, even if they overpaid for him in trade, giving him 100% of the leverage, and getting massively paid in the process.
