That's not how it works. There's no way to know what the asking price would have been on Johansson if he was traded before the ED, and there's no way of knowing if the Devils would pay it. He may not have been (and I imagine he wouldn't have been) available for a 2nd + 3rd before the expansion draft. You also can't say Jersey was open for business along those lines just because they made a similar trade for Mueller. Mueller is a defenseman; the Devils lost a defenseman when they traded for Hall and their blueline was atrocious last season so there was an obvious hole and need there. I would grant you the apples to apples comparison if Mueller was a winger, but he's not, so I think your logic here is a stretch.
You think the Devils really
needed Mirco Mueller? If they had that specific a desire for Mueller to fill a hole on their roster, they would have qualified him. Mueller lost a numebrs game in San Jose, and the Devils saw an opportunity to take a chance on him. He wasn't a specific need filler. He ended up only playing 28 games for NJ this season (some missed due to injury, but a lot more due to being a healthy scratch).
It wasn't Mueller OR Johansson for New Jersey, it ende dup being Mueller AND Johansson. The Devils were in an interesting position in that they had roster flexibility beyond the expansion draft rules, and could actually afford to protect extra players. There was actually a lot of speculation on Devils blogs and hockey blogs about what players NJ might target from other teams to help shelter them from the expansion draft.
If you read some of the quotes from Shero after the Johansson trade, you'll see references to him using the expansion draft to improve his team, about monitoring Washington's cap situation in advance, and about still needing to help his defense even after the Mueller trade.
"This is I guess something we've been alluding to most of the year, whether it's expansion opportunities or cap opportunities," Shero said. "And Marcus was a guy, knowing other team's cap situations. With Washington, they loaded up and made a hell of a run this year, but at some point, especially with re-signing (T.J.) Oshie, (Dmitry) Orlov and Kuznetsov, they're one of the teams we watched closely, and something had to give at some point."
[...]
"I'd love to get a defenseman somewhere, but so would everybody," Shero said. "I'd love to strengthen that part of our team, if possible, and adding Marcus to the left side with Taylor (Hall), we have a lot of different options, certainly skill, speed, what we've talked about since I've been hired in terms of the type of team (we want to be)."
How Ray Shero swooped in and brought Marcus Johansson to the Devils
It dumbfounds me that you'd rather lose Wilson or Eller over Schmidt. The Caps aren't here without Eller, and likely not without Wilson either. They're here without Schmidt. Burakovsky I'll give you but the other two... not even close. And calling Wilson a complimentary winger? What?
It dumbfounds me that you cannot see the difference between process-oriented thinking and result-oriented thinking. We're all speaking in hypotheticals here, so using result-oriented thinking about these hypotheticals is rather foolish. Eller absolutely stepped up when Backstrom got hurt, there's no question about that. But there's also no guarantee that Vegas take Eller, especially with Grubauer, Wilson, and Burakovsky dangling out there as younger players that fit the Golden Knight's identity much better than Eller does (especially given that they were already getting a bunch of 3C types in Karlsson, Tuch, and Eakin, albeit with an offensive explosion out of Karlsson this season). There's also no way to forsee that Backstrom would block a shot and break his hand in the playoffs, nor any way to forsee that Orlov wouldn't be hurt in the playoffs (imagine how screwed this team would be if Orlov went down right now).
Further still, have Schmidt around means their left defense depth in the past off-season is substantially better. Which means they aren't painted into a corner regarding Brooks Orpik's $5.5M salary, and may be able to trade him or buy him out. Suddenly they have a lot more cap space to play with to replace whatever winger or 3C or back-up goalie they lose in the expansion draft.
Do you think Wilson could carry a line offensively on his own? He's quite obviously the complimentary winger to Ovechkin and Kuznetsov. I didn't think anyone would take exception to that....
