It is a long weekend with beautiful weather and having guests over. I am planning on making steaks on the barbeque with the usual sides and fixings. Am I right in saying that nothing beats cooking food on the grill?

I don’t know if it is strange or coincidental because I have come across a few articles about Nashville Predators’ defenseman Shea Weber over the last week. The articles suggest that the Predators consider trading Weber now before his abilities decline.

It started with Ryan Lambert’s article on Yahoo! In it he references fellow Yahoo! writer Josh Cooper and SBNation’s On the Forecheck Kristopher Martel.

Martel points out that others have attempted to determine when a player reaches his prime at age 27, but he also points out that 27 is just an average and some other notable defensemen have done well even when they were in their thirties. Note: other articles suggest that the dropoff for defensemen is 29 or 30 years of age.

He evaluates Weber’s shooting percentage and Corsi values and concludes that “Weber has slowly and steadily been on a slight decline in terms of his basic and advanced measurable statistics for at least the past six seasons.”

But he stops short of saying that he should be traded. Both Yahoo columnists go there, though.

In Cooper’s article he gives five reasons why the Predators should deal Weber within the year:

1. Trade offers for Weber will be great
2. They already have enough depth on defense
3. They should not risk it to see if last season was just a blip
4. New contracts for 2016 RFA potential players Seth Jones and Filip Forsberg will require moving some money out
5. Giving the reigns to the next generation

In the end he simply states, “But this is a cutthroat business. It’s about winning, even if that means dealing the face of your franchise,” referring to the fact that even with Weber, the Predators have not gotten past the second round in the playoffs.

Lambert looks at it from the perspective of dealing a player just before his prime has come and gone. He makes examples of San Jose Sharks Joe Thornton and Patrick Marleau, both of whom will be 36 years old when this season starts.

Unlike Cooper, Lambert realizes that Weber’s mammoth contract, which runs until 2025-26 when he will be 40 years old, is going to be a hindrance to any trade. Any teams trading for Weber now will have to pay him $16 million over the next two seasons in signing bonuses. Only starting in 2018-19 will his salary drop to $6 million a year.

They will not score a ridiculously huge deal unless they take on some bad contracts in return, and that will also impact what they will be able to do in the summer of 2016. So strike down Points 1 and 4 from Cooper’s list.

He reinforces the “why wait” argument. “Many executives might be willing to gamble on Weber after one bad year, but two might allow them to start to see a bit more of the wear and tear of a decade-plus in the league. Then the value of the return goes down, and you're probably left just hoping someone takes that monster contract (payable until Weber is 40!) off your hands and you're lucky to get much of actual value in return.”

One more thing that Lambert also admits plays a factor is how close a GM feels their team is to winning the cup. While it looks bad that San Jose kept Thornton and Marleau, it sure looks good that the Chicago Blackhawks had Patrick Sharp and Marian Hossa. The problem is that only two teams make it to the final and only one wins.

His conclusion ends up being that, “No one over the age of 28 should be untouchable in the right circumstances.”

That sounds logical and it all sounds relevant for fantasy hockey managers too.

Why set the bar at 28 though? Why have any limitations? After all, a player can have a career year at any age.

What I do want to do is go back to an article that was referenced in the Cooper piece. It comes from a report done by Daniel Schwartz of the CBC.

There are some highlights that the other writers do not touch upon.

Defensemen “improve and decline more slowly than forwards and do so very symmetrically” and “perform within 90 per cent of their peak from 24 to 34 years old”. Weber has been producing within the mid-40 to mid-50 point range since he was 23.

The author of the 2014 report mentioned in the CBC article, James Brander of UBC’s Sauder School of Business, also states that, “Elite players improve faster initially, continue to improve for slightly longer and experience slower age-related decline,” “They do not experience a major drop-off in performance until their late 30s,” and probably most noteworthy, “Elite defencemen hit their scoring peak from 29 to 33.”

Does it make sense for Nashville to trade Weber away when he will be turning 30 on August 14?

Here are two final points from Brander. 1) “Experience matters more in the playoffs in almost all sports,” and 2) “If you look at the age profile and take account of both age and experience, just on paper a team like Chicago looks good.” He was only off by one season.

Even though Nashville has great depth at defense, trading away their leader doesn’t seem to make sense if they want to win the Stanley Cup.

Real and fantasy GMs must always consider making tough moves. Players you want to keep to the very end sometimes have to be dealt. In this case, the reasons for moving Weber are flawed.

It would be like taking that beautifully, thick and juicy steak off the grill five minutes too soon because you were fearful of leaving it on for five minutes too long.