The health risk was real, regardless of whether people here wish to acknowledge it. He had a very unique surgery with no comparable to assess comeback time or even if it was fully possible.
Even as a one year rental...if the perception was that EK was 100% the offer quality would have been better. NHL GMs throughout the history of the league have amply demonstrated that they cannot contain themselves and someone would have offered up a buffet of high end returns. That didn't hapoen.
So you're left having to accept that what we received was all he was worth as a one year rental which would really mess with the board's perception of his value or you can accept that it was a risk adjusted return.
So why did dorion give teams the go ahead talk to his agent about an extension leading into the final trade if they were already scared away by injury history? Why would teams be interested?
Karlsson's start to the season last year was certainly still impacted by his recovery along with missing training camp, but by the end he was skating fine along with 37 pts in 39 games in the new year to finish the season, even if teams though he'd yet to fully recover, that's still not the kind of production that scares teams off.
I really think it's far more likely teams were scared off by his lack of willingness to commit to signing an extension than any injury history. By the time they were trading for him, he'd had 15 months to recover, and they'd seen him producing like his old self for the last 4 months of the prior season.
You might be right that we got what he was worth as a one year rental, but I really don't see any evidence of teams being scared off in mass due to his injury history. That's certainly not the story line the media was running with at the time. Your claim that GM's have historically proven they'd give up more if there weren't the health concerns lacks any real world examples. Can you provide compatibles? Frankly, I don't think there are any; players of Karlsson's caliber don't get traded as rentals very often, heck they don't get traded very often period.
I guess there's the Yashin trade... That was quite a while ago and he was an RFA at the time. Any other examples of elite players dealt without a contract? Maybe Kovalchuk, who was a top 10 forward when traded to NJ, he didn't exactly garner a killer return in Cormier Bergfrs and Oduya. Like Karlsson, I suspect teams were scared off because of contract uncertainty, though with him it was because he was turning down huge sums from Atlanta.
