me2
Go ahead foot
The argument is academic -- the bottom line is that if our GM were on of the brilliant posters on this board who claims to have been right all along about Bieksa, we would have been left with a bag of pucks (that's what they wanted to trade him for, right?). You've got to imagine that Gillis at least got some feelers from other GMs about Bieksa given the speculated interest in him around the league by the likes of Montreal and Columbus, but Gillis held on to him, even if he realized that he might eventually be forced to deal him.
It's not about the bag of pucks it's about the $3.75m in cap space and what else you could do with it. Heatley is worth more than a bag of pucks, much more, but SJ would trade Heatley for a bag of pucks right now to get back that $7.5m in space. If we did the infamous Bieksa for Filatov deal we could have used the $3.75m to sign Zbynek Michalek (a much better player at the time of the signing).