Players come and go. It’s a business, after all. A team can’t afford to keep them all, like a kid being unable to keep collecting toys. Eventually, one gets handed off to another owner.
When Ryan Reaves left the Blues, I was quietly mad. I use “quietly” because the Blues made a good trade with Pittsburgh and won a Stanley Cup last year. Reaves didn’t help the Blues win or lose a better chance at the Cup while he was in St. Louis, but he sure impacted the games they played. He formed a pretty special team with Scotty Upshall and Kyle Brodziak near the end of his time.