Tell me you are not comparing Kassian to Penner, Byfuglien, Bickell, and Lucic. If it was only size that mattered Sestito would fill that void. Not saying Kassian won't eventually mature both on and off the ice and be a solid contributor, perhaps as good as Bickell, but he's got a long ways to go.
But we didn't HAVE a healthy Kesler at the time of that trade. That's the point. And the team was already taking criticism from the year before about lack of secondary scoring. So we trade away our 3rd leading goal scorer right on the doorstep of the playoffs of that year. Brilliant........not. Hodgson did not have to be another Kesler, he just needed to continue what he was doing, that is when AV let him actually play. He was the leading rookie scorer that year, per minutes played. Do you honestly think Cody would have pouted and refuse to either play the third line center or if AV had had the cohones, played second line center with Kess on the wing?....on a President's Cup winning team, and a favorite heading into the playoffs?
I think most are fine with the trade on paper, its the timing of the trade that sucked. We got back a 3 to 5 year project with our window shutting and a desperate need for scoring heading into April.