You can't keep on giving away young unproven players without knowing what you have in him. This is a terrible deal. If you want to trade Fischer, get a kid his age back, like we did in the Schmaltz trade. I just don't understand how you guys a few years ago wanted to trade all the vets and play the kids, even though they weren't ready, now that they are maturing, you want to start trading them for vets on their down side of their career.
We have 8 kids playing on the roster and we have for the past two seasons. There are 19 roster spots. Roughly half of our forwards are under 25. The average age of the roster this year is 27.1, which is heavily weighted because of the amount of vets on the blueline. The following would be in the "kid" territory.
Keller - 20
Fischer - 22 on 4/15
Dvorak - 23
Crouse - 22 in June
Chychrun - just turned 21 (wow)
Schmaltz - 23
Hino - just turned 25
Garland - 23
We have the following knocking on the NHL's door
Merkely
Cappobianco
Hayton
Bunting
and to a lesser extent
POJ
Schnarr
whomever we draft this season
There are only 12 forward spots and 6 defenseman spots. I count 8 young forwards in the top list which allows us to have 4 vets. Out of those 4 spots Stepan, Grabner, Galchenyuk (still so impressive that he just turned 25 and is only a year older than Domi), Richardson are not going anywhere. We are most likely losing Panik and will most likely retain Cousins. Archibald is around too for depth. We need to add goals. Do we hope that Merkely can take Panik's spot and bring an additional 15-20 with all the other kids seeing growth? Or do we open an additional spot by moving a young forward to help shelter the remaining 7 on the roster? Fischer, Hino and Garland are the only ones I would be comfortable moving. Garland wont return enough, and I thought Hino was better than Fischer, although he is two years older. If we could trade in Stepan or Richardson for a 5o-60 point center somehow I'd be all for it, but that won't happen, so the only way in my mind to add 20 more goals from one player next year is by cutting ways with one of the promising kids. I don't want Merkely to stay buried in Tucson, which means it would be best to make sure there is a spot for him to compete for this season or we move him before his value is tanked (he will be 22 next season). We are in the spot of having too many good things, but we need more great things.