This reminds me of a movie called Other People's Money, with Danny Devito and Pennelope Ann Miller.
During a meeting with the shareholders of a company Devito is trying to take over, he says that, like it or not, the company is worth more dead than alive, and the shareholders want to make money. They end up voting for Devito's plan.
Of course, it has an implied happy ending, because Pennelope's character comes up with a way for the company to shift their production in a way that will make the company much more profitable, but the situation is analogous to the Kreider situation.
Kreider still has value to us, but, like it or not, he's probably worth more at this point as a trade chip. There are lots of teams that would be interested and be willing to pay a significant amount to acquire him. He has 2 years left on his contract after this one, which gives other teams even more value, without needing to commit to him long term.
The alternative is to keep Kreider until his contract is up, and then either re-sign him when he may have declined, or let him walk, neither of which will help us all that much in the future. We have plenty of wingers to replace him.
I'm not saying that we 100% must trade him, but the argument for doing so is pretty strong, depending on the return. This is what smart teams do. They trade away older players while they still have significant value, using those assets to make the team younger, cheaper and deeper, enabling them to remain competitive. Do we risk taking a step back? Absolutely. But we are at a bit of a crossroads anyway. Now is the time to be bold.