That 4th line is bad.... and overpaid.
Malone will be the 13th F before Benson will.

Hawks decline. Take off retention on Murphy, take out the hawks 4th, add a 2nd or decent prospect from Edmonton.

That is a whole lot of dumps to take on and on top of that you want almost $1M in retention and a 4th... CHI does not do this trade. You can say Barrie has value but he doesn't have Value to CHI. Especially if we are already burning a retention slot on Murphy. Because the only thing Barrie would possibly be good for is to be flipped, and that would require retention, in which case we would only have one retention slot available for the next two seasons and only two retention slots after that for two more seasons. CHI declines.

Barrie would actually help the tank. He's basically Gus, but slightly better. He can't play defense if his life depended on it.

***EDIT*** Not that I want him as a Hawk. I don't

Yeah. That is a valid point. But I still wouldn't call that positive value. haha. Also, I am a firm believer that CHI fans have always been way too hard on Gus. For whatever reason he was always under the microscope when I've seen "better" defensemen make the same mistakes.

That 4th line is 2/3 already on EDMs roster ..... Blackwell is a RH 4C option that fits one of EDMs remaining needs.

The 13th forward isn't really a concern, Benson has the lowest cap hit therefore he has a leg up on Malone imo

So the return for Connor Murphy & Colin Blackwell should be better then the returns for Alex Debrincat, & Kirby Dach?

FYI: Jake Chaisson is a better than decent prospect.

I wouldn't mind having him back as a 3rd pair PP QB. There is value there. It's just not worth paying a ton of money for because that's the "easy" part of defense. The hard part is being defensively responsible and then obviously combining the two is the ultimate goal of course.

Sure. I just think we could accomplish the same thing by letting Mitchell and Regula play. Not sure if they are included in the conversation about "taking out time with development" though. If they Davidson wants them to get more time in the AHL then yeah sure throw Barrie on the roster to fill a hole for a couple years.

The whole thing about rebuilding is you take on cap and you retain salary in order to receive better deals (weaponizing cap space).

Additionally teams will eat money in order to facilitate a trade, especially in season or around the deadline (as this trade would be)

Are you comparing the #7OA pick, #39 Pick, and a 3rd round pick to the 32nd OA pick and Jake Chiasson??? Chiasson is the definition of "decent". He's the #116 pick that had the same season he had prior to getting drafted. It's not like he had some kind of breakout season. The reason the return for Debrincat wasn't any better is because there was no extension in place.

Yeah. I'm aware. What I'm saying is CHI could more efficiently and effectively utilize their cap flexibility. Also, every team only has a total of 3 retention slots at a time. If we take up one with Murphy for 4 years and plan to use another one on Barrie for 2 years, that would leave us with only one retention slot from the 22-23 season all the way to the end of the 23-24 season. Davidson is going to want to keep at least two retention slots open until the 22-23 TDL. And retaining on Murphy is just not realistic. It's not happening. And CHI is not getting enough for everything you want in that deal.