You guys need to remember that Tanev is now deployed as a defensive zone start specialist and his offensive drive has fallen off more and it was never his bread and butter. Tocchet is caving teams with the Hughes Hronek pairing. Winning an offensive zone faceoff with those 2 is a nightmare for our opposition and is a big reason why we have a weapon that teams are unable to answer similar to Makar Toews
We shouldn't be trading Hronek they just need to adjust the contract on the basis of his lack of productivity. Those 2 together play at another level and we need to keep that going
If we bring Tanev in, I think the ideal pairing down would be with Zadorov or Soucy. The former would almost be like rookie Hughes as Zadorov is prone to cheating and needs a reliable partner to cover him. Soucy/Tanev is strictly a shutdown duo.
Only way I see Hughes/Tanev working together now is if Hughes started cheating in the same way Karlsson does, and mostly play like a fourth forward. Not sure that's a good direction for his game or even something he'd be good at.
That all said, we need Hronek to actually come down on his demands. If he won't budge at 8M+, then it's a harder conversation even on a shorter term.