Not sure how it goes down. There is certainly more risk with Lucic who has a higher cap hit and one more year in term. But at least he is playing and not a liability. He's just not measuring up to his contract. Alzner is a liability and not playing. An argument can be made he can fit on the 3rd pairing but that means he takes Benn, Kulak, or Reilly's spot and they all provide more value vs Alzner.
But I do support keeping Alzner in the AHL and saving $1M in cap space. The $3.625M would hurt but we won't need that for a bit yet. We would still be able to sign Stone or Panarin for $9M if we could
Lucic wouldn't be "playing" here though. He isn't better than Shaw or Armia, let alone Tatar, Byron, Lek, Drouin. Heck I don't even know if he brings more than DLo at this point.
Lucic would be the Alzner of forwards taking a spot from a younger player. Habs could also play Alzner in the line up on the 3rd pair instead of Reilly if they wanted to.
Also Lucic has NMC so trading for him locks us in with him and he has to be protected at the x draft.
It would be creative and would reunite CJ with his buddy, but I just think it puts us in the same boat we are in with Alzner. An older player that can't keep up taking space away from younger better players. And especially in 2 or 3 years when we have guys like Suzuki trying to make the line up I don't want Lucic blocking his way.
I beleive the best thing for MB is to keep Alzner in the AHL and force his hand. If a team will take Alzner off our hands without sending us back another bad contract than make the trade. If not pay Alzner to play in the AHL until he gets sick of it and asks for his release.