"Brodie falls off a cliff when not paired with Giordano"
Peters moves him to the third pairing to spread-out the defence, and Brodie proceeds to get a goal and an assist.
Unless a really good deal opens up for Brodie, he won't get dealt. Nobody is ready to take over his minutes and responsibilities. If another GM wants to overpay, or something else falls into Treliving's lap where he can replace Brodie on that top pair, Treliving isn't about to weaken a critical position for this team.
I am all for trading Brodie to upgrade somewhere, as long as he can be replaced adequately. That's the key right there. There is no way he is simply going to be traded to free up cap space, with the assumption that Rasmus can simply come in and play that position all year. Either way you look at it, you will be hard-pressed to replace Brodie's play with another defencemen at or below that cap hit. Other teams simply don't want to deal their cap-friendly high-end defencemen. I believe that it is going to take another season for Rasmus to get seasoned and given more opportunity and responsibilities and see how he handles it.
Want to make room on the cap? You trade guys away who aren't producing relative to their cap hits. If you keep these around, you end up as being a cap team that underperforms regularly.
Neal - Stone - Frolik, in that order, is the guys Treliving needs to take a look at and figure out what he can do. Hathaway is as good as gone IMO, since some team out there will give him a bit more than what Calgary will give him in the off-season, especially if he continues his strong play.
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