Quoting: Burnout
There are cap considerations you're ignoring. Even if you assume Edmonton would find another team doing the retaining, the difference between trading Drouin at 50% for nothing vs. Drouin at 50% for Barrie is Price being on offseason LTIR vs. in-season LTIR, which is rather significant for Montreal's cap planning. Its why clearing a forward with that cap is Hughe's priority right now, not a veteran D-man.
I'd also argue that Barrie isn't "pretty damn good" and he pretty clearly doesn't eat top-4 minutes, but that doesn't really matter for the deal for Montreal. The fact is, it doesn't make sense for Montreal either this season or next.
I'm not ignoring the cap implications, currently we'll have ~$10 million come off the books for next season. Price LTIR gymnastics will be a constant game unless we can move his contract. We're within cap compliance right now with Price going on LTIR in season. Both clearing a forward and adding a vet RD are of his utmost priorities right now. We currently have ~$2-300,000 cap space with the available moves in house. Moving Drouin for Barrie would reduce the amount coming off next season by 4.5 million. Still leaves us with > $6 million in available cap space without making any additional moves outside of Drouin/Barrie.
Savard/Barron/Wideman is disgusting as a RD lineup and adding a guy like Barrie would work well with this lineup, especially since he's more of a PP specialist but still plays D. Regardless of his lack of defensive skills he's still a vet RD who would be eating up top 4 minutes on this roster. Not to mention it's not a long term solution but would still get us through at least one season (if we decide to move him next year) or for at least 2 seasons (if we let his contract run its course).
We need a RD desperately more than we need way too many wingers. If EDM is willing to give us a guy like Barrie for a guy like Drouin, I'm taking that deal 10/10 times with the current needs of this roster. Neither Drouin or Barrie have a future with MTL, it's all about filling the needs we have without it costing too much or signing yet another roster player. We gotta move some of these contracts out to fix our holes and this is a very good option for us (not like we're trying to contend anyway, just need to ice a team that people will pay to watch while they lose every game)
To me, it makes more sense than holding onto Drouin in the hopes he brings us a 2nd rounder? Fix an issue now, we have plenty of contracts to trade with later anyway.