It's not even close?
First off, what exactly are you trading for Sheahan?
You could probably get Sheahan for borderline nothing, since the Wings need cap space to sign Athanasiou.
Second, what happens if he can't produce again and you tied up two mil in an 18 point player?
I highly doubt that Sheahan is going to be only an 18 point player when he's playing with Phil Kessel. I would expect the absolute minimum for him to be 15 goals and 25 points if he's getting PP minutes. Not as good of production as Bonino, but not terrible. The point is he'd be a downgrade from Bonino, but the downgrade in other areas of the roster would be larger.
I'll take an upswing argument with Karlsson, but Sheahan is 25 and coming off an atrocious season and his more statistically impressive seasons came when he was playing 50% plus in terms of offensive zone starts. When he started playing more defensive minutes in the NHL his game started to fall off a cliff the last two years.
Also, hasn't he been moved around from center to wing the last two years?
Sheahan put up 14 goals and 25 points in 2015-2016 when getting below 50% offensive zone starts. That's not terrible. I'm also not going to take his production on a cluster**** of a team as gospel for how good he is right now. Do you really think he wouldn't produce more with Kessel in Pittsburgh than he did while playing with the Wings?
And anyway, my point was that the 3C would be someone like Sheahan, not Sheahan specifically.
Third, why the **** is Guentzel with Malkin?
Because Guentzel works with both Crosby and Malkin and it makes more sense to keep Sheary with Crosby and play Guentzel with Malkin in my eyes? It's not like I'm suggesting Guentzel go to the 3rd line here.
I take pixies roster which I guess is a good illustration of why this debate exists.
Why would you rather take that roster? You make your 2nd line, 4th line and bottom pair worse only to overpay to keep a guy you shouldn't overpay to keep.
The difference is we have a bunch of young wing options that can graduate during the season and very little at center. The only actual center prospect we have is Blueger. People say Simon but he's played nearly exclusively on the wing. Same with the others people keep mentioning.
But we have no young options that can graduate on defense, outside of Pouliot. The Penguins have more young 3C options at center than they do on defense, just because they have no one even close outside of Pouliot on defense.
But I think one of the points is which will be easier to upgrade during the season, a bottom pairing D or a 3C? Third pairing defensemen get moved all the time during the season and at the deadline. A 3C is going to cost a lot more, so you may end up losing Hagelin anyway.
To me, if we were going to spend money on a defenseman during the offseason it should have been for someone who is more of a second pairing than a third pairing guy. I would have felt better if our third pairing was Cole-Schultz because then, even with a bad 3C (and lets be honest, right now we are going to be icing a bad 3C) our defense is much more solid.
And then you start accounting for injuries, and one bottom pair defenseman turns into 2 or 3. Look at the roster from last year, the Penguins defense had Ruhwedel having a great season plus 6 legitimate NHL defensemen and they still had to trade for both Hainsey and Streit.
Let's pretend you didn't sign Hunwick and instead have Cole, Ruhwedel and Pouliot as your #5-#7 defensemen. Pouliot could easily bust, that could lose one guy. Ruhwedel could easily prove last year was a fluke, that could lose another guy. And then there's injuries. Suddenly, one bottom pair defenseman turns into needing 3 bottom pair defenseman, and that's with only one injury and two risky guys not paying off.
Could Ruhwedel and Pouliot both progress or show that last year wasn't a fluke? Yeah, but it's a risk to do so and I really don't know why you're overpaying for Bonino to take that risk.
