Yes, they did. obviously so. The league did not value Walman properly, and credit to grier for taking advantage of it. Obviously. Furthermore, the cap hadnt risen yet, so his 3.4 this year and next year was significant on the cap. Now, with the much higher cap next year, his 3.4M cap hit next year is a far better deal, thus further raising his current value.
And yeah, the sharks are way better with walman on the ice than without him. You are claiming that is more a comment on the failures of ferraro, Thrun, Ruuta, Liljgren, etc than the virtues of Walman. I can see that argument, and there is likely merit to it. However, it remains a pretty singificant difference, since walman plays nearly half the game.
How can pending UFA dumoulin be worth a '25 2nd while a far superiod walman with a highly discounted year be worth a '26 1st (which is only slightly lower value than a '25 2nd).
The only reason grier could possibly want to make this trade is to get even younger, figuring no chance that he would want to extend a to-be 30 year old walman. I get that idea if and only if, you see the next 2-3 years as further bottom feeding years and want to be as primed as possible for the '27-'28 season and beyond with an army of guys in the 23-29 age range then. Celly and smith would be 21/22 years old. Eklund 24. Zetterlund 28. Mukh 26. Askarov 25. Dick/musty/cherny/bystedt/etc all 21-23 years old. Then acquire a few 23-25 year old D over the next few years and they will be 26-28 then.
I get the idea of targeting that age range and time period for making the legit run. However, that will make the next couple years a whole lot of frustration and losses, so I worry that by the time your guys are ready, they will have no winning culture.
obviously, much is hard to predict, but this move seems like a statement by grier that next year, at least, is another dead year.