Absolutely not. You don't give up one of your top scorers to get out of $5 mil in salary obligations. Does the cap hit suck? Sure. Can they make it work this year? Absolutely, they just have to let Markstrom walk and find a backup capable of playing 30-35 games.

Rolling the dice with Demko is risky, but he deserves a shot as the starter, and by letting Markstrom go, you'll have the flexibility to add a decent defender to help him out.

And what about the value of Kahun and Montour? Is Vancouver really not interested for one or the other player?

I'm sure Winnipeg matches that offer sheet.

Montour is coming off of his worst NHL season. Defensively, he was horrible. There was talk a few weeks ago of him being non-tendered. If he's given a QO, he'll get $4 mil. That's a lot for a guy who wasn't anything close to an analytical darling this year.

Kahun is a 3rd line guy. There's plenty of 35-40 point guys out there on the market if that's something Vancouver is looking to add.

Any particular reason you want Jakob Lilja? Dude is going to the KHL, wouldn’t be surprised if he never plays in the NHL again, tbh...

I will not disagree about the value of the trade, if you do not like it fine, no deal.
But Miller, Skinner, Sheary, Okposo, Rodrigues, Hutton, Vesey as well as Montour all had Epic bad seasons playing for Krueger.
He is a 30 pt defenseman on any other team playing for any other coach.
30 pts makes him a top pairing as 57 defensemen achieved that number in 2018-'19 the last full season, which he actually had 35 which ranked him 41st.
In the previous season his 32 pts ranked him 46th.
Let me add, only Ristolainen had a higher TOI than Montour last year.
As to his defense, only Scandella had a higher PDO and no skater had a higher +/- or 5 on 5 SV%
So his offensive output ranks him as a top pairing defenseman and he was statistically one of the better (best) defensemen for Buffalo last year.
Before you start in to say the Buffalo defense sucks, only 9 teams gave up fewer 5 on 5 goals than the Sabres and none of those teams had a blind GK for part of the season.

As to Kahun 40 points in 2017-'18 and 2018-'19 would rank him 145th and 138th respectively which makes him a top 3rd line player and marginal 2nd line player.

So again you may dis the trade but trading Boeser cuts the cap by $5,000,000, adds a top pairing RHD and potential 2nd line winger.
So dislike the trade but do not understate the value of the assets being returned.

EDIT:
That was silly talk of not giving him a QA which Adams debunk weeks ago.
Krueger was Botterill's biggest mistake, this team should have been on the heels of the Leafs, not out of the preliminaries.