In my opinion, this trade had very little to do with Sharp, or Bickell, or the salary cap issues. According to a lot of rumors, someone told Saad and his agent, and the Blackhawks too, that they were going to offer Saad $6.5m over 5 years. While we could have found a way to afford that, it would not have been a good deal. Your stars are almost always overpaid. We're already doing that with Toews and Kane, and we can't do it with Saad too. Someone like Columbus can build a team around a 22 year old potential (more on that later) stud American. We already have 19 and 88. So at that point, it's taking the picks, or taking the deal. You can argue the picks could be a better value long term, but they aren't going to help the team next year, especially if we still have replace Sharp and/or Bickell (and Vermette, Richards, Versteeg, Desi, etc.). Anisimov is basically Vermette, and Dano is 20 years old with almost the same point pace as Saad. Yes, definite sample size in play. But Dano wasn't playing with two Hall of Famers. The other guys are depth, but they're cheap depth. I hope Saad flourishes in Columbus and earns that contract. But we shouldn't be the ones paying it. Does it weaken the team? Absolutely. But we knew it was going to be weakened. And it's not even July yet. We'll be fine.