For me it boils down to whether Lucic was the possible solution for the Neal problem. It seems it was probably the only one available at the time, but it was the absolute worst time to have to do it (it seems this was the tightest cap crunch year ever league-wide?). The Lucic trade was convenient because it solved a few problems at once, but the cost is an unsolvable problem for the next 4 years.
Neal missed 10+ games six times in the last 9 seasons. Buy out possible. LTIR possible. Bury in Stockton possible (of course little cap relief). A trade would always be possible, it's just a matter of how much you have to sweeten or the crap you have to take back.
Lucic has an NMC and hasn't missed more than 3 games in a season in the last 9 years.
I think it would also be a fun exercise to read the first few hundred posts of the Lucic signing and Neal signing threads. A suspect a few posters have spun themselves around so much that they must be very dizzy.
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