Quoting: Windjammer
It's not exactly what Winnipeg is looking for. Bottom 6 players of any type are is zero need or interest as the main piece in an Ehlers trade. So no it's not a hockey trade, it's a trade that suits your team only.
A "hockey trade" is player for player with future assets not being the centerpiece of a deal. Ehlers for McMichael would be a player for player hockey trade.
I like Ehlers a lot as a player. The fact of the matter is he's a rental winger that hasn't really been trusted by multiple coaching staffs despite the underlying numbers. Those types of players (and even much more valuable ones!) do not return bona-fide young, top-6 centers. In just the past year alone varying levels of comps for Ehlers in Guentzel, Lindholm, Toffoli (twice), and Mantha did not return the kind of thing you're asking for.
It's fine to not like McMichael. I personally am relatively down on him after this past year, and he's far from a guarantee to be a true top-6 caliber player. However he's already proven at minimum he can be a perfectly adequate 3c that can play up in the lineup in stretches and is that young and cost-controlled profile that WPG loves. There is some give and take in every trade and the mythical "young, cost-controlled, NHL proven, high upside, bona-fide top-6" player just never gets moved in any scenario. You have to pick and choose from some of those things and McMichael checks off a lot of those boxes. Want something with more upside? Take a 1st in this year's draft and hope that guy pans out in 4 years. Want a definite top-6 player for next year? Probably going to have to be someone older and with less term.
Every year there are a couple of players we do this same song-and-dance about and every year they get moved for the exact same thing and it's always underwhelming