Dumo was also pretty productive offensively in college and probably had an underrated puck moving ability here since everyone focused on his D.
I know very little about Emery because he’s so vanilla that I have no interest in watching him play. I’m not really sure the old prototypical shutdown offensive black hole d-man really exists anymore. You have to be able to move the puck in today’s NHL. Just feels like a low upside mid/bottom pairing guy that I would have no interest in drafting but I could be wrong. Maybe he’s the next Rod Langway. I doubt it. Doesn’t really feel like a Dubas pick anyways. Sully, though….
What is tough is that, we see such a different game between the regular season and the playoffs.
In the regular season, over 82 games, I would say that you absolutely need the majority of your back-end guys to be able to move the puck. Contributions from the backend can vary but I think if you have a pairing like Dumo-Letang, that's the perfect balance. Just like Orpik-Gonchar was. Just like Pettersson-Karlsson is now.
But come playoff time, you see guys like Zadorov, Tanev, etc become prominent role-playing dmen. They eat up the minutes, they provide defensive zone shutdown play, and they are physical.
If it's a two-team, one-line league and you have Matheson-Marino on one team and Zadorov-Tanev on the other, I would be comfortable saying that the MM team would win the regular season handily, but the ZT team would take it in the playoffs (all other things being equal and consistent with trends we currently see). Finding a good mix is tough. Those players that have both skill sets are tough to find and highly coveted.
My thoughts on the upcoming draft are: pick the best center and wing you can get the 2nds. Then whatever. Focus up front. When we resign Petts, we have Petts-EK, Graves-Letang locked up for quite a while. Get the forwards, sign the dmen. Seems like there's always a serviceable 2nd and 3rd pairing dman available in FA.