Quoting: Jexus
No one is paying that much for Jost no matter how much you try to justify it. Hes a bust end of story
He's not a bust, that's just the opinion of ill-informed fans who hardly ever watch him. Allow me to enlighten you with some analytics:
First of all, Jost is a net positive player at 5v5 as shown in the graph below. He's also over 50% in both Corsi and Fenwick, also showing that he's a positive possession player.
He's fantastic at drawing penalties:
His zone starts are mostly defensive, which contributes to his limited offensive output. He's excellent defensively though, so has a lot of value in a bottom 6 role.
To elaborate on that, here are his isolated impact stats at 5v5. He's a bit of a non-factor offensively, but dare I say that he's elite defensively, with -14% xGA/60. For reference Bergeron is at -16% xGA. That means that with Jost on the ice the team gives up 14% less chances than the league average. Anything in double digits is considered very good if not elite.
Lastly, though the sample size is small he has done very well on the PK for us this season, posting a team-best -17% xGA/60 on the PK. Without him on the PK the team conceded 9% more chances than the league average, which is 26% worse than if Jost is on the ice.
I could also bring up his zone exits and forechecking stats which are also very good. He's very responsible with the puck too, with a takeaways:giveaway ratio of 71:31.
So overall, Jost is a 22 year old 3rd liner who is bordering on elite defensively and who is reliable with and without the puck, and also won't hurt your team with penalties but rather actually wins plenty of penalties.
The reason why the term "bust" gets thrown around is because his offense hasn't translated (yet), but he absolutely has a role on an NHL team as a 3rd liner (at the very least). And what do you think a 22 year old 3rd liner with elite defense should cost via trade, considering that he's cost-controlled and likely to be pretty cheap to resign (mostly due to his offense not translating yet)?
It's actually not uncommon for good checking line forward to get traded for something around a 2nd + 3rd, and I'd say that that's the very least Sakic should be looking for if Jost gets moved, since young, cost-controlled and defensively reliable forwards have plenty of value in a flat cap league.