See, I'm perfectly fine with him in the 3 spot, problem is the 2 and 4 are missing. I guess we just fundamentally disagree on how good of player he is, because while I would not trade Cowan (he's got that hint of being something special), but I would have traded Sandin last year (and posted about doing so),and I would gladly have traded a 1st+2nd for Make JcCabe with two more years at 2m this deadline. Another dman of that calibre would make a big difference.
Re the pick expectation
Dmen picked in the back half of the 1st
2015- Chabot / Juulsen / Larsson/ Carlsson
2016 -Chrychrun / Fabbro / Stanley/ Cholowski / Johansen
2017- Valimaki / Liljegren / Vaakanian / Joseph / Jokiharju
2018 - Smith/ Merkley / Miller /Beaudin /Lundqvist/ Sandin /Alexeyev
2019 - Harley / Thomson /Heinola / Bjornfot / Johnson
The odds of drafting a d man in the back of the 1st that can give you 3 years of 20min a night physical mid pair D is not high, and the odds of them doing it on their ELC/ cheaper than 2m is even lower.