One thing to note is that having Johnny and Tkachuk both playing for contract years (amongst other factors) seemed to do a ton to recover their trade values.
The team was too good to seriously consider trading Johnny at the TDL, so it is moot for him.
But let's travel back to last off-season and consider 4 wingers' '20-21 stats:
Player A: 0.29gpg 0.77 ppg (Dec 1997)
Player B: 0.46gpg 0.74 ppg (Nov 1996)
Player C: 0.37gpg 0.89 ppg (Apr 1995)
Player D: 0.34gpg 0.88 ppg (Aug 1993)
Player A was Tkachuk and we know his contract status.
Player B was an unsigned RFA with pts plateauing & career high in goals; he got traded for a top-10-protected 1st+ Devon Levi
Player C was an unsigned RFA with stats trending steadily upwards; he got traded for a 2nd+Blais (before expansion draft)
Player D is Johnny; 1x6.75M with impending 5-team TC
Obviously there are a ton of other factors consider; overall player quality and general past stats would definitely favour the Flames, but contract status favoured Reinhart and Buchnevich (who both came in at lower AAVs and produced ppg+ this year). I'm pretty sure both were in a position to sign QO and go to UFA next year (Reinhart $5.2M; PB only $3.5M). PB signed 4 days after the trade; SR was more like 2 weeks.
You'd probably be looking at different suitors for the Flames players and I do think they'd be worth a bit more to the right team, but this is a reasonable snapshot of winger value at the time. Both trades happened a few days after the expansion draft.
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