But doesn't the decline in relationship increase the odds that the player will want out? I think that's kinda the point, once a player hears that he is not wanted, or at least not wanted in the same role, he will want to go somewhere that he is wanted.
I'm not suggesting the Rangers call up Trouba the minute the season ends and say "Hey bub, you aren't worth your salary, we want you to get the F out, whaddaya say?" But at some point it will become apparent to them that is the case and that conversation will have to be had tactfully with Trouba. That he is worth more to some other team than he is to the Rangers. The day is coming... maybe not this offseason, but as each season passes becomes more and more likely.
And the real discrepancy seems to be that a certain faction wants to iron-clad that date as 2023-2024 when the NMC expires to a limited NTC, where others seem to be saying "What real difference does a year make? Why not after 2022-2023? If a trade could make it worth our while, it makes sense to move on a year early."
Ie, we are talking basically about a difference in timing and when that timing makes sense.
What Trouba brings over Schneider right now is offense and not defense. I mean, these are advanced stat-driven so of course we can nitpick what these things really mean but the fact is Schneider is plain excellent at defense. There's really no debate whatsoever that Schneider is soon going to be able to handle Trouba's defensive responsibilities in a more than adequate fashion. The debate would be whether it's worth keeping Trouba WITH Schneider, but the argument I keep hearing is "we can't move Trouba because we have no one to replace him," which is not true. A better argument would be "we can't move Trouba because we can't replace Schneider on the third pair when Schneider moves up." Certainly you have less proven options for that third pair role but if you are going to drag your feet for clearing up $8m in salary because you can't trust second year players in Nils and Jones or a first year player in Robertson on that third pair, well, that's not really reasonable either. A playoff contender isn't risking everything by playing highly regarded rookies on the third pair, because, uh, look at us doing exactly that with Schneider this very year.
And yes I tend to be skeptical of intangibles because they cannot be measured and are almost basically a personal preference in how much they count. I of course acknowledge that the experience, the body checking impact, and the leadership that Trouba brings is valuable. But because they cannot be measured it's hard to quantify how valuable they are in relation to his actual on-ice defensive play definitely not being worth $8m.
Proponents of those intangibles know this and disingenuously base their arguments almost entirely around these non-quantifiable things as trump cards. "Sure, Schneider is just as good as Trouba, but EXPERIENCE! CASE CLOSED!" Come on. Of course experience is worth something but guess who else is getting some this year? Fox. Lindgren. Miller. There is value to that but it has to be contextualized and that's something that is never acknowledged.... that those values are not priceless and they are not irreplaceable and they are not mandatory when you have other leaders on the team as well (like Panarin, Kreider, Zibanejad, Copp, etc).
Anywhere, here's the stat cards. For good measure I'm throwing in Miller's so you can see his jump from last year to this year as it's reasonable to conclude Schneider also continues to develop along a similar arch (ie, a GSVA of 0.5 - 1.0 is probably reasonable for Schneider next year with an even more positive defensive rating; and again, the deficiency between Schneider and Trouba's overall GSVAs will probably be offensive driving entirely). For comparison last year Miller was -0.2 and this year Schneider is 0.0 pace but 0.2 projection (meaning the model thinks he will still slightly improve).
