The OP essentially asked if Hickey is a bust or not, right? To me whether he is hung onto, replaced by Nick Ebert or dumped for an empty roster spot makes little difference to me since in my my mind none of them will contribute to a fantasy roster or possess any trade value at all. For me looking at it that way, context becomes irrelevant.

Sure Hickey was taken 4th in the 2007 draft, but in their final rankings the NHL Central Scouting had him ranked 26th out of only the NA skaters. That's without counting goalies and European players, so Hickey was projected to go by them in the mid to late 2nd round and his career since then has been that of a mid to late 2nd rounder. Talk about overreaching by the Kings. In hind sight it may have made more sense to swap their 1st and 2nd picks and have Oscar Moller taken 4th overall and Hickey at 52nd.

If it takes nothing to hold onto him then by all means, yes hold onto him. But to me he is a bust and will do no more for anyones team than a pop culture-15 seconds of fame-icon like the Ikea monkey, hence my original comment.

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10 team full keeper: 4C/LW/RW,6D,2G,5BN

G,A,P,+/-,PIM,SOG,GWG,PPP,SHP,Hit,Blk,FOW
W,GAA,SV,SV%,SHO

C- Giroux,Hanzal,M.Richards,J.Staal
LW- Lupul,JVR,Tlusty,Zetterberg
RW- Backes,Clarkson,Havlat,Kessel
D- Bogosian,Carlson,Enstrom,Kulikov,Markov,Yandle
G- Miller,Hiller,Crawford
BN- Kuba,Ruutu,Robidas,McDonald

Prospects- Armia, Connolly, Couturier, Etem, Forsberg, Girgensons, Huberdeau, Kucherov, Nyquist, Okposo, K.Palmieri, Stransky, Toffoli, Barberio, Gardiner, Gormley, Josi, Marincin, Moore, Morrow, Savard, Vatanen, Allen, Bernier, Campbell, Fasth, Hackett, Mrazek