The thing with Dunn is that everyone knew he had the potential to be a lot better. There was a very real question though on whether he'd get there, given his play his last 2 seasons here. Yeah, he might progress to be a top-2 guy ... and, he might also be a weak 4 whose offense increases but his defense remains equally shitty, so are we gaining anything net? The only "plus" there is that it would have been at a cheaper price tag than Krug, but there was no way Krug was getting exposed 1 year into a 7-year contract.
Protecting Dunn instead of Krug? Seattle picked on the cheap; they're not taking Dunn, Barbashev likely gets picked instead. Now we've got Faulk, Parayko, Krug, Dunn, Bortuzzo, Mikkola and Scandella on defense - better, we're hoping Dunn gets his shit together, Walman is expendable and never sees the NHL at all in '21-22, Perunovich is probably expendable as well, we probably aren't trading for Leddy at all - but Barbashev doesn't put up 26-34-60 here and who knows how that trickles down the forward corps [it's probably a revolving cast of Nathan Walker, Logan Brown, Klim Koston, Dakota Joshua and James Neal getting more playing time and accumulating another 4-5-9 in the process in total]. And then it's open speculation on how last year goes and how moves get made as a result and where that puts us now.
