People here will continue to defend that trade, and maybe the value was fine in a vacuum - but given where the Islanders were headed as a team, the trade made little sense, and it doesn’t take a Monday morning QB to come to that conclusion.
We did get a valuable player back and clearly we have not been developing this type of player and would not get one as a UFA.
With all of that being said, I completely agree with your take. Time will ultimately be the best judge of this trade and frankly it’s even too soon to say for sure how everyone did.
One more thing I’ll add is that when we made the trade initially, Horvat was unsigned. I guess I have to give Lou the credit that maybe he had a gentleman‘s agreement that Horvat would sign here but without that assurance, it was remarkably risky for a franchise in our position and with our history (Tavares).