still blows my mind that many on here do not see the value Brann brings to our team specifically.
Like did they not see how bad the movement and creativity is without him? how we have no stable 2nd pair if we split Brann-Zub? How Brann seamlessly steps in for one of the best d in the league and the team doesn't skip a beat? How he is only 22 and clearly still figuring out the league but still productive and a net positive?
People pointing to his point totals as proof he is struggling is ignorant and stat watching. He's clearly outplaying his point totals.
I will preface this by saying that I would not trade Brannstrom unless it was in a deal where he is valued as a legitimate high end asset (i.e. value of a late-1st or better) and we return a legit impact top 9 F/top 4 D.
Brannstrom has had some really good play - some stretches where he has been instrumental in our ability to break-out, transition, move the puck around the o-zone, and he has had some stretches where he has defended quite well. I'd say we are definitely in one of those stretches right now.
That said, he has also had stretches where he hasn't accomplished much - sloppy with and without the puck in his own zone, undisciplined, and overmatched. His discipline has gotten much, much better but it can still be a real issue. His man-on-man D and zone D have both improved, but can both be real issues.
His play on the PP has been ok, but not great. Personally, I thought he had the ability to outplay Chabot on the PP and he hasn't done that at all, imo. It's a very high bar, but it's the only area where he can hope to compete with Chabot. ES, PK, shutdown, creating ES offence, etc... Chabot has him beat handily. So if we are looking at Chabot's 27min pool of minutes, I don't see Brannstrom taking many (if any) of them and performing as well as Chabot could.
Next year, Sanderson will join. We will also have Holden on the left side. Can Brannstrom outplay either on the PK? Probably not. At ES? Maybe. There are certainly situations where I would rather have Brannstrom out there than Holden (and vice versa). Sanderson is a wildcard, but I could certainly see him being closer to Chabot than Brannstrom within a year of his NHL arrival.
If Brannstrom want's to carve out an important role here, he will need to be much better on the PP and, most importantly, will need to play every shift, hard, consistently, and responsibly. If he can't do that, there are guys who will be able to bring more from the bottom pair. Zaitsev: 14 + 0 + 3
There's the problem - we have a clear "top 4" of Chabot, Sanderson, Zub and Hamonic, with two spots remaining. Chabot and Sanderson should be more than capable of covering the PP time... Zub and Hamonic can take some PK time, but you don't want to deploy them as your main unit because then you tire them out and have to play mix and match in your top 4. Zaitsev, for all his warts, has been decent on the PK (39th in GA/60 amongst D with 150+ mins; Zub is 11th, Holden is 47th, out of 70 guys). Interestingly, Brannstrom is 7th best in the league - out of 194 - when you lower the threshold to 25+ mins, but it's very hard to say that can be extrapolated... there are lots of guys around him on that list who you probably wouldn't want out there on the PK. Can Brannstrom develop into a legitimate average or better PKer? Will DJ give him that opportunity? Between those two questions, I would say the response is "likely not".
Should Brannstrom be run out? Hell no. We would need to both a) add a good player on the backend and b) have no injuries in order for him to be superfluous/not be able to make us a better team. Will that still be the case a year from now? I'm not so sure. But I am certainly willing to wait and see unless a team values him as a legitimate young NHL DMan in a trade that addresses a need for us.