Like ive said, not a fan of the trade....but this is ridiculous. If he never amounts to anything its a terrible trade? Because why? The HF community values prospects more than proven hockey players?
Because decision making premised upon the ideas that grounded this trade would destroy a franchise in quick order. Franchises that make decisions like the one that formed the foundation of this trade always fail. These kinds of decisions are symptomatic with what the worst franchises in American sports consistently do.
If the trade ends up successful, it's largely a product of random chance, rather than well thought out, intelligent planning.
Build a team based on the thinking that is part and parcel of a trade like this, and you end up with teams like the Snyderatto Redskins (a decade of horrible trades gutted the player development pipeline, and combined with terrible scouting/draft day decision making , the Oakland Raiders (Palmer Trade), same deal in baseball with teams like the dodgers, the mets, and lately, the Indians and now red sox. Teams that make decisions analogous to this decision, are not long for the competitive world. They fail, quite consistently.
In 1999 when we brought Cerrato in I bashed the hell of it. As someone who'd seen Cerrato's work in the bay area where I was born and raised, I knew his raison d'etre, and his terrible track record, and that combined with his willingness to be a toadie, rather than a tom hagen like consiglieri, insured that the redskins would be run into the ground. Ten years later, my arguments proved prophetic. It didn't take much intelligence to argue as I did 18 months ago that the Raiders trade with the Bengals (a first rounder and a conditional 1st or 2nd in '13 (determined by the raiders post season performance or not)) was catastrophically bad and would seriously wreck the rebuild being done in Davis' last years, and if somehow the raiders made the playoffs, the trade would be even worse (something hard to imagine). Not surprisingly, 2 years later, the Raiders got nothing out of the trade other than a season and a half of horrid overall performance, and lost out on a top 20 pick in the 2012 draft, and a top 35 pick in the 2013 draft. Stupid, backward, moronic decision making and asset management.
Our decision making was damn near identical to these clowns. As such, even if it pans out, it doesn't matter as decision making of this sort, when consistently adhered to, and supported as justifiable, results in wrecked franchises. The best possible result, is that all we lost is a solid center who may not turn into much at the pro level, and that is totally unacceptable considering the process involved, the worst possible result is we've lost an elite, or good player. A very pre-shanny redskins/raiders kind of trade.
