I’ll throw out another opinion, just for the sake of it.
I don’t love this trade at face value, but one of the few things I was critical on during the Gillis era is I did not feel he “went all in” enough when our window was open.
If Benning feels our window is opening, that doesn’t necessarily mean we need to be the favourite each year. Our window under Gillis was short, and while I don’t think it could have been extended, I do wonder if we could have forced it open sooner and had a few more cracks at it.
If Benning trades our 2nd round pick for the next 10 years in the row to try to give us a longer competitive window, in theory I’m okay with that. I get we aren’t perennial contenders, but I think it’s worth putting our best foot forward each year if at all possible. We’ve seen young teams catch fire and win the cup in the past, it’s not impossible we could go on a bit of a run.
It isn’t a popular opinion, but we may need to lose some draft picks over the years to accomplish this. I just hope our late round drafting is well enough that we can stay afloat somewhat. And, I get their are teams that have extended the window through the draft rather than trading draft picks. I do support this balance, but as I said, consider this opinion as well.