The Nuge
Some say…
Continue
Meh, at least you'd have a legit #1. As for your last part, who the hell knows. You shouldn't even be thinking about trading Subban in the first place, but it's Montreal so...
That and it's not like PC is so busy watching the Oilers in the playoffs right now.
Klefbom-Subban
Trade/Davidson-Demers
Nurse-Trade
Thats a solid D core. And I think everyone is naive if they think Nurse is playing 1 second of time in the AHL next year. They didnt send him down in the worst of the season when he was at his worst. They are probably not sending him down to AHL next year barring a disaster camp. He is going to have a full offseason to bulk up, a full offseason to break down film and watch everything he did wrong, and a full offseason to get better. What well see at camp is not likely what we saw this year. Hell even in junior he started out super slow but then gradually got to an elite CHL D
Assets going into the offseason
Eberle
Yak
RNH (maybe)
Poliout
2016 1st (could be extremely valueable, or still really good)
2017 1st, 2nd
2016 2nd
Jones
Bear
Paigin
cap space (big thing actually)
I think you could do damage with those assets. One Leddy trade, one big trade
Subban's cap hit at $9M is an issue though. With McDavid and Leon's deals pending in two years budgeting any more than about $26M for the defense means you have issues up front. With Subban that leaves you with $17M to fill in 6 slots. Assuming Sekera was the guy traded rather than Klefbom, which I think is unlikely you now have $12.8M to fill out your bottom 4 and a spare. In a world where Jeff Petry costs $5.5M don't expect to do this by signing FA's.
My guess is that with less in the way of truly high end assets and about the same cap or less space you get Hamonic and one of Barrie or Vatanen. Barrie would be more expensive of course but no where near the cost of Subban, Still he would provide a similar offensive dynamic and Hamonic makes you much tougher defensively.