The guy has to produce without needing Eichel. Everybody can produce with Eichel. If he can't do it without a crutch, he needs to be traded for somebody who can.
He produced fine with O'Reilly last year. He looked reasonably good on the second unit PP and with Sheary last game. I'm optimistic (though less so about Sobotka playing as well as he did vs the ducks).
The biggest thing with Sam is that he needs to play with talent to best realize his potential. Most of his top level talents are facilitative in nature and some he is relatively elite at (net front, passing).
Though he's shown in stretches that he can be successful being assertive, I think it's completely fair to say that's not his strongest suit.
Overall he's played relatively well this season (finishing aside), but I'd love to see that switch flip that we saw post New Year's last season to kick in abit earlier.
Trading him for anything other than a crazy haul would be pretty foolish.