I know everyone's gonna be like "OMG Torts would hate Drouin" but the reality is that Torts is going to open things up this year and that Drouin would fill a big need for the Jackets, so the fit is better than people realize.

I've been thinking about basically this exact trade for a few days now. KK is a potential Dubois replacement, Drouin fills a big immediate need and Columbus gets more draft capital as an upcharge for dealing PLD to an in-conference team. I like it. The framework for this actually works really well.

Why weaken the team that much for PLD? Droin and KK are big parts of this team right now. By sending them to Columbus we lose our advantage of depth. I am not convinced that PLD is that much better than KK or Suzuki. Sure he had 1 season over 60 points and projects to be a solid 1C but both Suzuki and KK also project to be 1C's in as little as 1-3 years. Why fix what isn't broke? That is exactly what happened to the Leafs when they went out to sign Tavares and look how that worked out for them. What happens if we trade for PLD and he plays out his 2 year deal then wants 11+ Mil? do we give him that simply so we don't lose him? Is he worth 11 Mil at this point? I don't think he is.

First answer: no.
Second answer: definitely not for that.

Of course he’s available, but there’s no way in hell the habs trade for him.

Why are you making it sound like PLD to the Habs is 100% not happening? Apparently MB loves him, it's very likely there will be trade discussions with CBJ.

It makes no sense for the habs to give up any of the pieces that would be required to land PLD. We don’t need another C, and it’s better to have people on ELCs.