Also if this team is so concerned about losing another defenseman to waivers, why wouldn't they just waive one of their forwards and keep McGroarty up? Their forward depth is looking substantially stronger than it did last year, and Puustinen is the only guy who seems like is a risk of getting claimed off waivers. And even then, McGroarty already looks like a better player than Puustinen and obviously has a way higher upside. In a scenario where they lose one of their depth forwards to waivers, they very likely have the forward depth to be completely fine.
Even if we want to pretend that they'd keep up a nothingburger player like Shea just out of fear to losing him to waivers, I don't see how it makes any sense to send McGroarty down to keep Shea up. McGroarty's last couple of games firmly took him to "he should be a full time NHLer" in my eyes. Sending him down based on waiver exemption to keep up worse waiver eligible players is the exact kind of move people here have been complaining about for years.
