Sheary is a proven commodity and has gotten significant playing time with Crosby in the past. We know his ceiling, we know his floor, and I'm just worried his floor is closer to his actual norm given his tenure in Buffalo (yea yea quality of teammates, whatever). We know that Sheary needs to play with elite players to do anything productive, whereas we didn't have a large sample size with Kahun in that regard.
The "Kahun has played with top 6 talent" is really only
relative to Chicago where he still put up 37 points in 82 GP, with a mixed bag of linemates.
He played like...10 games with Malkin , but his most common linemates were McCann and Hornqvist/Simon. His icetime was also a little lower at that point(w/McCann. A quick look at the game log shows me he had about 6pts in the last 12 games (in which he was playing with Malkin) which leaves 21 points in 38 games w/McCann. He seems to have done better with McCann, which I doubt we will be able to say about Sheary should he and Sid not work out.
At worst Kahaun can produce without Crosby or Malkin. Can we say that about Sheary who has only ever produced with Crosby? That is my biggest gripe. Are they close players overall, maybe, but I think it's clear Sheary is a passenger. The jury is still out on Kahun.
Having said all that I just saw this, so maybe JR knew something we didn't: