Losing Broberg is a sting, no matter how you look at it. He is someone who was brought up the Ken Holland way. Percolate in the minors, and force your way onto the big team. In this case it looked like it was working. 3rd pairing was all his, if Broberg came in and picked up from where he left off in the playoffs. Sure there are some holes in his game yet, but we were just starting to see where his game can go, and quite frankly so did the St. Louis Blues. They weren't going to throw all that money at him if they had much doubt that the overpaying gamble wasn't going to work.
We can debate how big a hole has been put in our blueline by letting him go, but we can all agree that there's a hole there now none the less, and it won't be easy to find a young damn to pluck there who is at the level of Broberg.
While we're at it, let's not give up on Emberson either. He's raw, and he has his own set of flaws, but his potential strengths are there, and could very well trend to be a 2nd pairing defenseman.
Hopefully Jackson/Bowman......(I still shudder at that name) can use the picks acquired to flip and find a decent young dman to get the youth movement back to where it was.