Well yes, of course -- we have a bad team and fans want to horse-trade to get a better team. Hughes has been trading away players left and right as much as he could, and he doesn't look like stopping either.
So what? Posters on a hockey board discussing trades differ in opinion on who to trade and for who or what.
Well there is a lot of push-back against the notion of trading Barron regardless of the return. Barron.
Please show me the "push-back against the notion of trading Barron
regardless of the return". Regardless of the return.
The push back against the notion of trading Barron is almost entirely because of what people think the return could be vs. what Barron the player could be.
You have it wrong. Weber was in his late 30s, Price was in his late 30s, Petry in his mid 30s, Suzuki under-proven, Gallagher cooked, and Danault allowed to leave -- that's not a core and never was. Bergevin's "small core" was not a core, it was just small because of how bad the rest of the roster was at all times.
Whilst having massive gaps in the core positions, Bergevin was investing 6 years in the likes of Andrew Shaw and handing out big contracts to Alzner and Anderson and that instant stinker to Gallagher. A team prioritises big investments in its core but absent having those players Bergevin invested anywhere he could. We never had a core under Bergevin, from day 1 he was very much a "win by committee" type and over-invested in the so-called committee. He over-relied on Bouillon, on Weise, on Danault, on Desharnais, etc.
Just because it was a bad or ill conceived core doesn't mean it wasn't a core. There isn't an age requirement or a minimum number of games or level of achievement.
It also ignores the reasons Bergevin approached the team the way he did - he didn't want to pick a direction. He was never willing to truly go all in on the group he had (because it wasn't good enough), but he also didn't want to bottom out and focus on building through drafting and developing. So you ended up with shuffle moves (Subban for Weber, trading Eller for picks and then using picks to trade for Shaw, using limited money to sign an Alzner, go from Galchenyuk to Domi to Anderson). Keep the guys you view as the core and shuffle the rest.
Current management isn't picking an extreme direction, but they're clearly on the draft/develop path. Its why they haven't been aggressive this offseason despite having cap space. They want to see improvement, but they'd be perfectly happy to see the team finish bottom-5 again as long there's sufficient growth in young players and prospects. I tend to agree with that because Montreal doesn't have a
proven core yet. And betting on the current core would be comparable to what Bergevin did.
Other than the occasional Caufield proposal, I haven't seen anyone propose to trade away intended-to-be core players Slafkovsky, Reinbacher, Hutson, Demidov, or Suzuki.
You're free to look through the various threads on here, but apart from Demidov there have been proposals to move each of those players. Because the Habs are a "bad team and fans want to horse-trade to get a better team".
So why do you care that some people are reticent to move Barron?
