That's true, but he could have acquired 4 first and Kiiskinen for Gibson and gave Walman away with a 2nd and it's still a bad trade.
Let's say the organization did have issues with him and needed the cap space.
There's no way he had such little value that a 2nd to be attached. None. You see if you can get anything value for him, if you can't you try waiving him, if he clears waivers then you try to attach a pick, starting with a 7th and work your way down. I'm sure some team would have stopped you before you got to a 2nd.
Even if Yzerman needed the cap space immediately for something that *might* happen (and didn't by the way) he just handedly it terribly and it's poor asset management. We sign Stamkos or the Trouba or some other trade goes down, it makes more sense. But as is we just gave away a decent player and decent draft pick for literally nothing.
Now with that being said is Jake Walman the difference between making a deep playoff run or not? Probably not. Was that 2nd likely to turn into anything we'll regret? More than likely no (but could have been used in other trades). Is he better than at least 3 or 4 of our current defenseman? Most certainly.
It's always been more about the poor asset management than it is Jake Walman specifically.
For what it's worth, I think teams recognized that Yzerman was desperate to move Walman and his sitting down the stretch had not gone unnoticed, and so decided to demand at least a second to take him. That's the hardest time of year to move money, and we paid a similar rate to others dumping contracts at the time. I don't think that he accepted a second when making another call would have let him move Walman with only a 4th.
That should have prompted Yzerman to wait and keep Walman. Frankly we never should have been trying to get rid of him in the first place, and especially not if the league decided to take advantage of us. My biggest problem with the trade is who we decided to keep/sign instead of Walman. If you have 5 employees, 2 are good at their jobs and three are useless, you don't fire one of the good guys because they were late to a meeting. You can be picky about the little things when you have an organization of good employees. If you're being desperately kept afloat by a few individuals, you keep them around.
I wouldn't give a shit about Walman if I wasn't watching Chiarot, Petry, Holl and Gustafsson play beer league hockey every game.
