Defrag an old Time Machine backup to save space for archiving?

I'm aware of all the reasons not to defragment an OSX volume, as well as Time Machine volumes, but hear me out on this one...
I bought a new iMac and will be starting a brand new Time Machine backup. I would like to keep the old Time Machine backup around just in case I need access to some old files. I will not be adding anything further to this old backup, and I will not be using this old backup to restore any system. I will only be browsing and restoring files from this backup, but only rarely. I have removed (via the Time Machine interface's "Delete all backups of...") a number of large files and unecessary directories to reduce the backup size. I then ran the hdiutil compact command to reclaim free space from the sparsebundle.
I read, however, that the hdiutil compact command will only delete unused bands of the sparsebundle, and that defragmenting the contents of a sparsebundle will likely produce more "empty" bands that can be removed with another run of compact to further free up space.
Will it be okay to defragment the sparsebundle under these circumstances?

I've looked over Pondini's site and it's an awesome resource. I've learned a lot from it over the years. But my specific question isn't answered there.
The Time Machine software is complex and I understand that there's a lot of things to know to keep it running smoothly. However, my particular situation isn't commonly discussed. In scenarios not involving Time Machine, defragging a sparsebundle before running hdiutil compact is known to help free up more disk space by creating more unused bands within the sparsebundle that can be removed by compact. Makes sense. Why would this affect Time Machine's process? And could it be that it won't cause a problem for a sparsebundle that will only be used to browse and restore files? ... As opposed to a sparsebundle that one intends to continue backing up to? Are there defregmenting options that I should avoid, or be sure to use?

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