[Locke]

Overall, I've come around.

Within the structure of this team Neal was expensive and useless. Lucic, pushed farther down the depth-chart because unlike the Oilers the Flames dont suck, he might be expensive but useful in some capacity and the money was spent either way.

It remains a doofus for doofus trade, but on this team Neal was completely useless whereas Lucic might do something? Maybe?

I get all the moving pieces involved overall, but there is at least some hope that Lucic might provide something, anything, more than Neal did. Which was nothing.

The contract is still terrible and I hope Treliving has a fallback plan so that it doesnt bite us in the ass come the expansion draft, but otherwise the trade boils down to:

"The hope of something, anything, in exchange for essentially nothing."