Quoting: ChiHawk
Wrong. Clearly you don't watch the games. Keith was paired with rookies and BoQ who struggled a lot defensively, people who didn't watch him and only are looking at stat sheets don't understand this. If you go into his advanced analytics, when he played with a decent partner like Murphy, he looked good still.
Don't try telling me that he was being dragged down by rookie partners. All three of Keith's most common defense partners had better CF% away from Keith than they did with him:
Murphy with Keith: 46.33% /
without: 48.75%
Boqvist with Keith: 48.38% /
without: 49.35%
Mitchell with Keith: 41.63% /
without: 46.62%
Two of the 3 were appreciably better by xGF% without Keith, Boqvist was the same:
Murphy with Keith: 42.19% /
without: 49.31%
Boqvist with Keith: 46.99% / without: 46.50%
Mitchell with Keith: 39.43% /
without: 45.98%
Quoting: ChiHawk
BoQ who struggled a lot defensively,
Boqvist with Keith: 45.83 GF% in 220:46
Boqvist without Keith: 50.00 GF% in 393:15
Quoting: ChiHawk
That said, he's not a 1st liner anymore despite the hawks forcing him into 24 minutes a night but he definitely is a good 18 to 20 minute player as a #4 or #5 and anyone saying he's washed up and isn't a NHL player is purely ignorant. His contract has 2 years left also, but the salary is only $1M a year. Hawks should retain some, but at half retained, Hawks shouldn't do this trade. Much rather keep Keith on the roster as a #4 or #5 then give him up for free.
A #4-#5 who carries a $5.5M cap hit is absolutely a cap dump despite the actual salary unless you're sending him to a team that has oodles of cap space and is very cost-conscious. Unfortunately for you there aren't any such teams in Western Canada.