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With Gudbranson Trade, Rutherford Tries To Keep Digging Out Of Hole

Posted on February 26, 2019 by Kevin Creagh in Hockey, Sports // 2 Comments

After the 3 p.m. deadline passed, additional trades continued to trickle out as the queue at NHL Central processed them. The Penguins made two trades: One for D Chris Wideman from Florida for Jean Sebastian Dea, the second for D Erik Gudbranson from Vancouver in exchange for Tanner Pearson.

When I first heard about it at 3:20 p.m., I was pretty angry. Now that I’ve had dinner and played with my kids, I’m downright disgusted. Jim Rutherford managed to do something amazing — he found a defenseman worse than Jack Johnson.

Here’s a sampling of tweets from the Vancouver media who have covered Gudbranson for the past 3 years:

Well, that’s not good. Maybe Gudbranson has some of those great intangibles that I’ve heard are so vital for terrible defensemen. Maybe he’s a great puck mover?

Hoo boy. But what do I know ? I’m just a stupid fan unaware of the intricacies of playing in the NHL. Let’s hear from Gudbranson himself:

Here’s how he stacks up by various metrics in comparison to Jack Johnson:

And if you want to go old school, Gudbranson has a plus/minus of -27, the worst in all of the NHL.

To get all this goodness, which comes at a cap hit of $4M for the next two seasons after this one, Rutherford traded Tanner Pearson to the Canucks. In just one transaction tree, observe how Rutherford has gone deeper and deeper to make the Penguins worse — Hagelin to Pearson to Gudbranson.

Hagelin was not very good this year, but he had speed and was a dependable penalty killer. More importantly, he was a free agent at the end of the year and his $4M cap hit would have been off the books. Then he begat Pearson and his $3.75M cap hit for the next two years. Pearson was flipped into this current monstrosity at even more cap hit for two years. And at a position that is already flush with #6/7 defensemen in Marcus Pettersson, Jusso Riikola, Chad Ruhwedel, Jack Johnson, and now Gudbranson.

Jim Rutherford uses trades as his life-drug of choice. He’s continually trying to chase the dragon and find that high he experienced for two years during the Cup runs. But it’s evident that the magic is gone and he’s reverted to being a mediocre GM.

Rutherford has obtained and then traded the following players since the summer of 2017:

  • Antti Niemi
  • Matt Hunwick
  • Ryan Reaves
  • Riley Sheahan
  • Jamie Oleksiak
  • Derick Brassard
  • Derek Grant
  • Tanner Pearson

An optimistic person would say that Rutherford cut the losses quickly on his mistakes. A more rational person would see that in order to get out of these mistakes, draft picks have been lost and players of some marginal value (like Conor Sheary and Carl Hagelin) have had to be sacrificed at the alter of the trade gods.

It would be reductive to say that when Jason Botterill left to go become GM in scenic Buffalo that the magic was lost. I’m not saying that Botterill was the brains of the operation, but it’s not unreasonable to say that he may have brought a more modern approach that helped check Rutherford’s old school ideas of ‘grit’ and ‘defending teammates’ in a modern NHL built on speed and skill.

Nerd engineer by day, nerd writer at night. Kevin is the co-founder of The Point of Pittsburgh. He is the author of Creating Christ, a sci-fi novel available on Amazon.

2 Comments on With Gudbranson Trade, Rutherford Tries To Keep Digging Out Of Hole

  1. wkkortas // February 26, 2019 at 11:14 AM //

    Let’s give credit where credit is due–you look at that list of acquisitions, and you have the core of a pretty salty ECHL squad.

  2. NDHoops // February 27, 2019 at 6:11 PM //

    Interesting point about Botterill. Pens got younger and faster. Won two cups and said “Hey, that worked so let’s get older and slower” (Johnson, Cullen, Hornqvist and now Gudbranson) Something definitely changed.

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