I've come around on this thought...
In the other thread, Pokecheque wrote:
If OEL somehow finds his form again, this is a good deal for the Canucks...if he doesn't that's one hell of a boat anchor on your blueline there.
In thinking about this over the weekend, I came to the same conclusion.
They got rid of $12M of dead cap allocation in the AHL (Eriksson), and the pressbox/infirmary (Beagle, Roussel) - contracts that couldn't crack the lineup for $8.26M (about $7.26M in real cap hit to Vancouver) x
6 years of OEL. They threw in a 2022 2nd rounder and a 2023 7th rounder for good measure. I think this saves them more than $3.74M in salary because they actually get a player who can play D in their Top 6 (barring injury).
They traded this year's 9OA who turned out to be Dylan Guenther (I think GMJB had his hopes set on Kent Johnson or Brandt Clarke) for Conor Garland. Given the inconsistencies of GMJB's first round picks (Virtanen, Juolevi vs. Petterson, Hughes - Podkolzin has yet to play), I see this as good trade for both sides.
So if OEL sucks mightily, GMJB is as good as gone. He's basically rolling the dice on OEL returning to Top 4 form (if not Top pairing defenseman) who can take the tougher matchups from Huggy. Playing against the other teams' second unit will only help Huggy and GMJB still has to re-sign Huggy and Petterson, as well as RFAs Garland, and Dickinson among others, and find two RDs...
JTMiller/Petterson/Boeser
Pearson/Horvat/Garland
Podkolzin/Dickinson/Hoglander
Motte/MacEwan/Highmore
OEL/Myers
Huggy/(possibly Hamonic)
Rathbone/Schmidt
(Juolevi, Bowey, Brisebois)
Demko
Holtby
EDIT: There's a very slim chance that OEL will play like Niklas Lidstrom in his mid-30s but by then his buyout cap will be easier to swallow.
I'm hopeful OEL can turn it around in a hurry, fly high cover for Huggy for 3-4 years (since Edler really can't do it any longer and is likely signing elsewhere), and the injury bug doesn't hammer them like it has since time immemorial. Daniel Sedin basically vouched for his character and work ethic and those intangibles are things that old school GMJB really values a lot (see Beagle, Roussel and Eriksson). The cost is the prospect cupboard is bare like it was for the 2012 Cannots, only they had a couple of Presidents Trophies to show for it. That's the longer-term concern in addition to the OEL-batross... This does sound a lot like the Lucic for Neal bad contract swap... Only worse.