Since Wild lack centers Ek is kinda a non starter in trade.

horrible moves for Habs

You seriously need to stop overvaluing our prospects, our picks, and literally everyone who plays on our team. Gallagher is excellent and extremely cheap, and this is a very favorable trade. You can't have a stagnant roster and expect to stay competitive all the time

Yeah, I don't do that. And I never said there's anything wrong with Gallagher. And we seemed to be doing quite well riding with the basic group that won it all last spring - in our case, staying competitive is a product of keeping a championship team together. But A) we're not trading expansion-exempt Kostin AND our 2020 1st to shave only $2M in cap (remember that mission #1 right now is re-signing Petro) & B) Gallagher would give us another near-30 player that we'll need to re-up (surely with a raise) after next season. We already have plenty of guys to worry about for summer '21, we don't need one more. Besides, on our team, Gallagher may even be a third liner/PP2 guy, and would get less ice time than he does in Montreal.

Ordinarily, I'd love to have Gallagher. But this ain't gonna work for us.

*deep breath*

All this tells me is that we very much disagree how good this team actually was this year. Because I see anything but a group that was doing "just fine". Sure, we were first in the west (barely- the injury stricken Avalanche were about to catch us), but let's not pretend this was a dominant year. We're doing well because David Perron had a career year scoring a ton on the power play and in overtime, and Pietrangelo played like a Norris winner, and we played in the weaker conference, and got lucky that the Jets and Predators had off years. Our underlying stats were bad-to-mediocre all year- and that's not even just from evolving hockey, which I know you don't like, that's from Dom, Micah, and Tierny as well. The biggest problem is that we could not score- and part of that was losing Tarasenko, sure. But, Perron is 32, you cannot rely on his production to continue, especially considering where he scored most of his points this year. And, you don't know really know what you have in Tarasenko anymore, the only guy on this team who has broken 30 goals in the last two years, due to yet another shoulder surgery. Gallagher meanwhile has scored 30 the last two seasons and was on pace to do it again this season with Max freaking Domi and Phillip freaking Danault as his centers.

And you don't put a guy like that on the third line, by the way. Yikes what a take. Maybe you don't overvalue our guys (I still say you do- in the last two weeks you said we should get a second or a third for Bozak and you've told me Justin Faulk isn't bad even though he very much is) but that "Gallagher would be a third liner on the Blues" is the biggest undervalue of a player I've heard in a long long time.

You say #1 priority is re-signing Pietrangelo, and I agree. Beyond the fact that there's no guarantee he will re-sign- and therefore you shouldn't determine the future of this team around what he may or may not do, which has clearly been Armstrong's mantra throughout by leaving him last to sign - I disagree that this prevents us in any meaningful way from doing that. Everyone has pretty much said "well, some combination of Steen, Allen and Bozak have to be traded then to get cap compliant". While I think the chances of him waiving to go to Montreal are basically zero, this specific trade gets rid of Steen- who is the least productive, most expensive, and hardest to move of those three due to his trade clause. You can still move Bozak and Allen in separate deals and re-sign Pietrangelo and still have money left over to re-up Dunn, due to Gallagher only having a 3.75 million (!) cap hit next year.

Your note about the expansion draft status of Kostin- yeah, that hurts a bit. But, where is Kostin going to be playing on this team? Unless he's way better than he's indicated the last three years, he's not outplaying Schenn, Schwartz, Gallagher, Tarasenko, Kyrou, Perron for a top six spot. That's already six players and I didn't even include Thomas or O'Reilly, let alone Sanford or Blais. So he's playing third line minutes, at best, and there are plenty of options every year for third liners either internally or as FAs. Him being exempt isn't that much of a boon if he's not ready to step in and be an impact player if we lose a top six forward, which we probably do without or without Gallagher.

Finally, sure we have Thomas, Schwartz, Kyrou to sign in 2021. Whatever. You're going to have people to sign every year. Let Schwartz walk, Gallagher is better. Or trade Perron, he might be the fourth best RW on the team by that point. There's no scenario where we aren't contenders anymore by acquiring this guy, and it improves our biggest flaw, which is scoring. If this was someone like, idk, Kevin Labanc or Vincent Trochek (idk, I'm just throwing names out there with similar cap hits who were/are on the trade block) I would agree with you, but Gallagher is a true impact player in his prime who could really help this team.