Quoting: markmws
I live in Philadelphia, and there are PLENTY of people who would be willing to offer Ghost a free ride to the airport: He is a dumpster fire in his own end. The trade off is that he is a very good puck mover. Those same people would throw a parade down Broad St. If the got Domi for Ghost.
I think Mete, at least defensively, is already superior to Ghost. The Canadians have a good one, there, and he seems well on his way to being a top-4. I am not sure Shaw alone would get that deal done: while Ghost is not the best in his own end, he IS a left-shot puck moving d-man, and they're rare. I would assume Shaw and Juulsan/Fleury would do it.
Ghost's defense is underrated because people forget the best type of defense which is making sure the puck is not in your zone. Sure, once the puck is in our zone, Ghost isn't good. He's not physical enough to constantly win puck battles and his defensive coverage just isn't good. But the dude does such a good job at breaking up plays in the neutral zone and getting the puck out thus not needing to defend, which is the best type of defense. Offense is easier to judge because often times you can just look at points and you know more or less who is better offensively. Defense is tougher to judge because there isn't really a black and white stat for it. But analytics help us get a better idea of how one does defensively. Every one of the following stats is at 5v5
CA/60 which is how many shot attempts a player allows per every 60 minutes played
Ghost: 56.37
Mete: 59.97
HDCA/60 which is how many high danger chances a player allows every 60 minutes played since shot attempts don't tell the whole story
Ghost: 10.10
Mete: 10.72
xGA/60 which is how many goals each player is expected to allow for every 60 minutes played. It removes the effect bad luck or goaltending has on players since that isn't always equal
Ghost: 2.23
Mete: 2.29
If it wasn't obvious, lower is better. It's a clean sweep for Ghost. He suppresses shots at a better rate, allows less high danger chances and on an even playing field, would allow less goals. All this while having an extremely down year, which should be put in quotations, mostly because stats prove that the "down year" was mostly because of a horrifically bad PDO (puck luck)
Ghost was phenomenal in his rookie season, everybody loved him. Was bad in his second season, mostly because of injuries but we learned that after the fact so people became skeptical. He was phenomenal in his third year, ranked as a top 20 d-man in the NHL, even received Norris votes, everybody loved him. Gets unlucky in his 4th season, mostly on the PP causing his point totals to go down and now people want him traded. People are bandwagons, not only when it comes to teams but even when it comes to players. Your stats look good, they love you, they look bad, they hate you. But at the end of the day, if the Flyers want to be a better hockey team, trading Ghost isn't the way to go because it is very doubtful that you're getting a better player in return, especially in a trade with Montreal since their better players probably aren't on the block. If people want to be dumb, so be it. Hopefully one of those people is not Fletcher