from Joe Haggerty of CSNNE,

The Bruins have lost four games in a row for the first in three years, the fans are upset with the team, the team is teetering on the edge of once again falling out of the playoff picture and there is doom and gloom surrounding the Black and Gold everywhere you look. This sounds like a perfect time for a HaggBag mailbag to get to the bottom of the issues....

If the B’s plan to keep Tuukka why not trade Subban in a package for a top 6 winger?

JH: There is no reason for the Bruins to trade Tuukka Rask, and I’ve never understood the logic there. He’s the reigning Vezina Trophy winner in his prime and has an ironclad no movement clause to start, and that is reason enough to keep him around. But just look at trades involving goaltenders, particularly those with term still on their contracts, over the last four or five years, and the returns aren’t very good. Washington trading Semyon Varlamov to Colorado for a first round pick and second round pick was among the best, and Roberto Luongo was dealt to the Florida Panthers for a fading goalie prospect in Jakob Markstrom and a roster player in Shawn Matthias. That’s it. Ryan Miller had to be packaged with Steve Ott in order to get Chris Stewart, Jaroslav Halak, a first round pick and a prospect from St. Louis, and I wouldn’t call that any kind of package that would entice me to trade Rask. No superstars or multiple first round picks being sent in exchange for goaltenders, so there’s no reason to think there would be an inflated market for a goalie like Rask.

Instead you’d be taking pennies on the dollar for one of the best goalies in the NHL, and that would be poor asset management.

Malcolm Subban, on the other hand, has some value given his cachet as a former first rounder and top prospect expected to be a franchise goalie at the NHL level, and he’s got the added bonus of already being a bit of a Canadian icon given his hockey family bloodlines and history in the Canadian World Junior program. He won’t be traded for a top six forward rental, or some kind of Band-Aid solution for this year’s team. The only way Subban is dealt is if it’s for an impact player that would become a part of the B’s corps moving forward, and preferably a young player with some cost certainty involved with him.

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