Quoting: Garak
I like Minten, but it's a big old stretch to call Minten "a future 2C" and he is not a top 50 prospect in the NHL. I also like Robertson, but he is a borderline bust that can't stay healthy. Lily has promise but is nowhere near being a 1RD. And two late 1sts aren't worth as much as you seem to think. Then there is the $5M cap hit and around $25M in total salary over the next 6 years to account for. On paper, the value CHI is receiving isn't even close. You are blatantly overvaluing assets.
The only way I could see something like this happening is, first, if Jones is willing to do it, and then the retention has to be manageable under Kyle Davidson's rebuild plan, and he would have to have the green light from ownership to forfeit that much cash toward Jones salary, which I highly doubt would be the case, among many other considerations that I am probably unaware of. That would be VERY hard to manage and plan for with all the players that are going to need new contracts within the next 6 years in CHI. The cap is not going to be jumping up over $4M every year, like it is over the next two seasons and players are going to command larger and larger pieces of the pie every year that goes by.
Saying that Minten isn't a top 50 prospect is just completely absurd. The guy just captained Team Canada at the World Juniors, not matter your opinion of him we can go down the list of players who've done that the last 5 being Wright, McTavish, Byram, Cozens and Dach and see that he has a high probability of being a top 6 guy. You can also judge based on his analytics in juniors which put his comparables at Bratt, Virtanen, Perron, Kopitar, Lucic. Again 4 of those guys became top 6 players and 1 became a megastar, Bratt is a star quality producer and Lucic was for a little period. My point is that when comparing Minten's progress to others before him it seems absurd not to thing he'd be a top 6 guy. He made the Leafs out of camp this year, beating out more established players (including Domi) for the 3C spot and he's just 19.
Robertson, you can see my past posts on him, calling him a Bust is also crazy, Reichel is a great comparison for him, at every stage of play since their draft year Robertson has outperformed him and even this year in the NHL by every offensive and defensive metric he's outperformed him (Robertson is just 1 year older) and significantly outperformed him 5x more goals/60, 3.5x more points/60, Robertson even has more hits in less games. So the argument against his physicality is weak. The reason people think he's a bust is because he made the NHL at 18 so they think he's failed to stick for year for the last 5 years but in reality he's only 22, Riechel is 21 and can't stay in the NHL on a horrible team (no offence) the fact Robertson can't still on a team with Matthews, Marner, Tavares, Nylander, Bertuzzi, Domi, Knies doesn't make him a bust, he's just a top 6 guy who isn't getting top 6 time on a team with more than 6 top 6 forwards. He's been fine injury wise this year and none of his injuries as like a concussion or ankle or back they are all breaks which don't have longterm impacts on a career. (Personally I'd love to see him in Chicago, I think he could ride Bedard's wing and get 70+ points next year, he's on pace for 40 playing 10 minutes a night for the leafs right now, just the bump in ice time + powerplay should get him to 50, accounting for better defenders then Bedard should push him to 70)
Lili I agree, he has the skill to be a 1RD but not the IQ, if that clicks he can get there but he's 24 now, young for a D but I think he'll be a 2RD longterm.
I do agree that there is a lot of complexity when it comes to Jones retention. If it was a 3-4 year deal it would be much easier cause by the time the new core needed deals it would be over. And obviously I don't have insights into ownership (not sure if hawks fans might) but from an outsider's point of view the Hawks seem like an organization that really prioritizes winning over money, like they aren't a small market team struggling for cash.
I think a Jones trade is interesting because the options are either:
1. Keep him and by the time the team is competitive you have an overpaid and underperforming 1RD. So you are hoping his "mentorship" today makes up for him messing up the cap in 5 years.
2. Trade him for cheap (like what San Jose did with Karlsson), you can argue they gave him away for free, they got a first and three cap dumps who likely would have cost a 1st (maybe more) to dump.
3. Retain and get a haul, we can debate the value of what I've sent you with the specific players but its essentially the equivalent of 5 late 1sts or 5 non-insignificant parts of your future. At the very least I'd expect if Chicago made this trade that when they make the playoffs in 2028 that Robertson and Minten would be in the top 9, Lili in the top 4 and at least one of those draft picks would have cracked the team. That's 4/20 players 20% of the entire squad that comes from this single trade.
Personally I think that Chicago should retain and make a trade, the haul would be big like this and immediately accelerate the rebuild by 2-3 years. It would also give you the chance to be smart on contracts with guys like Robertson/Lili and lock them down on longterm contracts above their current value so that in 4/5 years they are being paid under their value and if that's done right then the retention could end up being a non-issue when both those guys are getting $2-3M less than they are worth in 3-5 years from now cause you paid them $2-3M more the next 2 seasons.