I posted HuGo got anally raped on the deal the moment it was announced
Players like Lekhonen cannot be evaluated strictly by looking at their stats
We were in salary cap hell when we traded Lehkonen too, so even if the value that he got back in trade isn't the greatest, it was still a smart move that ultimately allowed us to trade an excess 2nd-round pick to get the pick we used on Michael Hage.
Having Carrier will also allow us to more easily trade Savard/Matheson, so it adds value too.
And then we get into the whole "rebuilding team" part of the argument, and it becomes even clearer why we had to trade Lehkonen despite the fact that he was one of our few bright spots in 2022.
And when we look at Kent Hughes' history of trades as a GM, though I am ambivalent about the Dach and Newhook trades I still feel that he has done very well overall given the circumstances.
Some of Hughes' feats include getting us 2 firsts for taking, re-signing, and then later trading Monahan, managing to manuever himself out of MB's salary cap hell whilst not losing too much value overall (easier said than done), getting a 1st+ for Chiarot,
acquiring Laine AND a likely high 2nd for Harris, nabbing us Matheson for Petry, basically managed to use retention slots and Mike Hoffman to acquire a high Pittsburgh 2nd this year and veterans (Petry and DeSmith), which he then piece-mealed into another 3rd and 4th...
Kent Hughes hasn't even been in function for three years and he's already done very well for himself on the trade front. Better than any 3-year window of any Montreal GM in a WHILE.