[SuperMatt18]

Yeah this trade was always going to get blasted by the "twitter" media.

They love Hamilton. Love his advanced stats, love the shot contributions, and look at how strong Gio & him were at driving play. And they are not wrong in those assertions.

What I think people are missing is that Hanifin is also pretty good at all that stuff. They were the 2nd pairing so they didn't face other teams top lines but him and TVR had pretty good advanced stats as well and that one chart posted yesterday showed that in an individual contribution perspective that Hanifin is actually very similar to Hamilton with stuff like puck retirevals, zone exits, etc.

The Flames did give up a lot in this trade but I feel like people are missing that you usually need to overpay for 21 year old, 5th overall picks, that have already been to an all-star game and put up 30 points last year. Plus add in another 23 year old, 5th overall pick that is a consistent 40 point guy at the age of 23.

So sure the Flames did give up a lot of value in this trade, and they do need to hope these guys take another step but I feel like most 21/23 year olds that have already succeeded at the NHL level tend to develop and grow as players in their mid-20s - and comparing just what they did last year to what Hamilton did last year may not be a fair assessment of the deal.

Also if what was said at the media availability yesterday is true and Fox's agent told Treliving that he wasn't signing with any team before free agency and was finishing his time at Harvard then his value would have plummeted. Would have been lucky to get a 3rd or 4th for him at that point.

And outside of the headline that is actually a really good article from Dellow.