Quoting: Twins1568
All of the trades?
I would say the Blues are getting the worse player (relative to contract) in each of the trades, which doesn't always mean it's an automatic loss, but for a team in contention it's not a great look. For example, Benn is almost certainly a step up from Schwartz right now, but is he enough of a step up to take on the extra five million in cap for the next five years when Benn is also older and palpably in decline. Even an extended Schwartz will probably cost 2/3 of Benn's contract but gives you up to 3/4 of his offensive value. So you can make up that value somewhere else.
Benn Trade: His most recent game isn't going to back me up on this, but Dunn has had elite level underlying numbers for a long time. I just went through Schwartz. Husso has been rough but it's still early and you swap him with Schneider and that is palpably a downgrade. And then Sanford is a solid middle-sixer. Benn and Hintz are both good top six players, but Benn is signed for way too long and has not produced enough to be worth 9.5 million for the next five years as a 31 year old. That's a loss for the Blues no matter how you slice it long term. Hintz is good, but not good enough to give up all of those other pieces.
Hoffman trade: Just unnecessary. I get you're trying to make the cap work but this is why taking on Benn is bad for the Blues. You have to shed other assets for players who can't crack the lineup on a worse team. Islanders don't have the cap space to take on Hoffman straight up anyway.
Bozak trade: Again, unnecessary. Again, I get you're trying to make the cap work, but Bozak is a better player right now than Lemieux even at 34. You're shedding additional assets to get rid of him. That's not good asset management.
Jokiharu trade: I like Jokiharu, but Perunovich has a much higher ceiling and is a much more versatile defenseman. He's unproven, but with the rest of our defensive depth unproven with higher ceiling is the kind of gambles we should be taking. And again, giving up a solid bottom six prospect in Alexandrov (which is the kind of players that contenders close to the cap need to use to fill in when the Sundqvists and Barbashevs of this team price themselves out) is bad asset management.
Basically, I think this team is worse in the short term and worse in the long term, so.