I at least appreciate that fact that Francis is publically stating that he isn't keen on making trades where we simply take on another overpaid/underachieving player for one of our overpaid/underachieving players. He's right that trades like that will do very little to improve this team in the short or long term. You can do a dump trade of Semin, but the other team is going to want to dump some of their dreck back onto us. That doesn't help. If that is all that is out there so far in terms of trade offers Francis is right to stand pat for now and just let things ride for a while. Frankly if Semin doesn't wake up we are effectively screwed because no one is going to want him at all, even for their own crap. At least teams would be willing to trade for Eric Staal and give us some sort of value back.