Have you been following the same Yotes team I am? Their defense sucks. Any notable potential help is years away. Schmaltz, while good, is injury prone and likes to take games off to the point of invisibility. He is a streaky player but when he is on, he is on so I don't think he isn't valued but Byram is a more valuable addition. Vejmelka hasn't looked good all year. I'm not sure he has value right now except for a low risk, high reward type of trade or put in a package, like this one.
I'd be worried trading Schmaltz screws up the organization's relationship with Keller. But at the same time, they need a shake-up.
This trade works for Avs and Yotes because they are on different timelines. I would do it if I am Yotes and I would look for a better trade if I were the Avs, but wouldn't rule it out.
Byram has had even more injury problems and taken more time off than Schmaltz has. I'm a huge fan of his but there's a lot more risk with Byram than there is Schmaltz.
Vejmelka hasn't looked amazing but our defense has sucked all year.
And yes, we are swamped with defenseman. None of them are good, top pairing D, and none of them are solid Defensive D-men, which is our problem- only Stetcher and sometimes Moser play that type of game even remotely.
And yeah, Schmaltz is what he is. But he's still pretty young, entering his prime, and most importantly will be relatively cheap to acquire.
As I said, I would do this in a heartbeat because I love Byram, but I'm pretty sure we could get more, we're taking a 4m deadweight back, Prosvetov is also worthless and would potentially go through waivers at this point.
Byram definitely has value, but I doubt we're going to give this kind of value based on half a season of play.
I would rather just do something like Johansen + Byram for Schmaltz as was proposed by another COL fan in another thread.