Both of Glass and Fabbro play better if you give them regular icetime with regular linemates/partner, so that they don't have to walk on eggshells feeling their next mistake puts them in the pressbox. Of course, it would be nicer if players had the confidence and could play well even through periods of inconsistent usage... then the coach would like them better and be more likely to actually grant them that regular usage. So there are chickens and eggs involved.
But as you say, it is what it is at this point. If we aren't going to actually make the most of them, that's too much money to tie up in healthy scratches. Now that we're a Cap team again, anyway.
I personally have a lot more confidence in Fabbro being a solid NHL player elsewhere in the league than I do in Glass. But you've got a RHD and a center, both fairly young, no term/commitment remaining, so they ordinarily shouldn't be impossible assets to move. If you could move both, then indeed there will be replacement-level leftovers on the UFA market that could be signed to plug the rosters spots more cheaply. Grab whoever is desperate enough for a near league-minimum 1-yr contract (Schultz, Schmidt, Boqvist, Brannstrom, whoever on D, some character forward up front like Johnson, Okposo, Clutterbuck). Two vets at $1.6M total that the coaching staff might actually use is probably better for us than $5M on Glass and Fabbro, alas.
