Bahl and Graves were fine in that"system" and you know that system isnt going well this year.

Again, if the Hawks do trade Foligno, they probably want a pick or a younger prospect who fits the rebuild timeline better than a 25 y.o. 4C who will be a UFA before the Hawks are contending for a playoff spot.

What are you saying? We need Graves back? We need to shed Bahl?

I have seen him. His value is his physicality. It’s appealing as a fan, but not what NJD needs. And certainly not at price above.

Its fine if you dont value the kid much, but you are cleary dont know his game. Hes in the nhl because he skates well, can fight, can skate with the puck, has a bomb shot that he is very good at getting to the net. He makes mistakes as all young players do, but adds everything you want in a bottom 4 defender in the playoffs especially.

Absolutely not. Xhekaj has already played 68 games in the NHL as a young defender on a rebuilding team. He has clearly plateaued, given that he has played almost one whole season. There is no way that a young D man improves once he hits that 68 game mark in his career. It absolutely has to be all downhill from here.
Add in the fact that he plays on the Habs (one of those NHL teams that other fans love to hate on) and you have a player (really any player on the Habs roster) that Montreal would have to pay another team at least 3 first round picks in order to do Montreal the honour of releasing him from the Habs.

His analytics are horrific on both offense and defense, and he constantly puts his team a man short. He's in the NHL because the habs don't have more than 4 adequate healthy veteran dmen last year or this year

Actually considering his rebuilding team, hes doing fine. His xga and ga has been good, his corsi is right around 50% , hes one of the few habs defenders that hasnt been bailed out by goalies so far this year. Add in the physical game he brings and he scored 5 goals in 51 games as a rookie defenceman last year and hes been pretty solid. Im not saying hes worth a first.. just not sure you actually know how he plays

17 games of sheltered minutes doesn't move me. Horrific last year, still takes awful penalties.

Yeah. MTL fans have a knack for pumping up players reputations, especially when they aren't even that good, and somehow people keep falling for it and teams keep overpaying for them. I don't get it.

The price on 22 year old analytically bad dmen, without draft pedigree or a high ceiling, earning 15 minutes a night without any quality RHD to beat out (Savard, Kovacevic, and Barron are all nothing special) isn't much. Especially not in season, where teams are generally going to pay for players who are good now. Contenders don't want to give xhekaj minutes and bad teams generally don't want to give futures midseason.

You can literally look at past trades.

The devils midseason gave up a 3rd for Jonas Siegenthaler, a similarly aged young dman with fantastic advanced metrics, but in a limited sample size