That's the funny thing about Legends. A lot of die hard fans have this black and white view of it, where the old Canon is this amazing pinnacle of storytelling and the Disney stuff is just all horrible garbage. But Legends was a huge mixed bag:
The Star Wars Holiday Special: Canon
The old Marvel comics: Canon
Abeloth: Canon
The Crystal Star: Canon
The Ewok Adventures: Canon
Mount Sorrow: Canon
Yeah, there where standouts like the X-Wing series and the Old Republic. But a giant crying mountain and centaurs where also canon, so, I think it's a net gain.
You had gems like KOTOR and Thrawn, but they existed in the same universe as Abeloth. The Jedi spent a whole book series fighting a magic space fart. The same universe where there there was a species called the Fftssfft - they were dandelion warriors.
Clearly they intend on keeping the good stuff. Thrawn's canon again (not old news by any stretch of the imagination) and Chewbacca is alive again. For the first time in... ever, Star Wars writers get to more-or-less pick and choose what stays and what goes. The problem a lot of Star Wars writers had in the past was that the stories they were writing didn't really feel like Star Wars. As seen with Rebels, the comics, and Rogue One, they're doing a great job with making Star Wars feel like... Star Wars.
People who separate new canon and old canon into such polarizing categories are blinded by fanboyism.