Last season:
Desharnais in 78 games: 1g 10a +3 playing 15:44 per game on one of the best teams in the league
Brown in 51 games: 3G 7a +2 playing 14:45 per game on one of the worst teams in the league.
Brown needs to cover about one extra shift per game to make up for the loss of Desharnais.
They’re both bottom pair do nothing plugs. They aren’t difference makers either way. Browns been a bottom pair plug for nearly 300 games in the league. Kulak will be good enough to cover him just like he was good enough to cover Desharnais.
Emberson is the big question on whether he can repeat his 30 games from last season with an expanded role and expectations.
22 minutes a night, a plus player and 30+ points isn’t going to crater your 2nd pair.
Nurse is far from good value on his contract, but he’s not going to crater your second pair on his own.
Brown is not on Desharnais's level and even within the org the preference was Desharnais they just couldn't sign him to a $2M contract, even if the skill level is somewhat comparable and J. Brown is a better skater, Desharnais's defensive awareness is much better, he's better on the PK, he competes harder in the dirty areas, and he's very good at being a pain in the butt to play against as his nickname Seaweed suggests, he's just always on or around guys, crowding them and making them fight for their space.
J. Brown's career he's pretty much only played on really weak d-cores and even then got scratched plenty, his analytics aren't good and he straight up got outplayed in pre-season by not only every NHL d-man we have, but also every AHL d-man we have with the possible exception of Hoefenmayer.
You can also look at how the coaches deployed the 2 our coaching staff played Desharnais over both Kesselring and Stecher when those were available options and in Arizona, Stecher and Kesselring were higher in the pecking order than J. Brown, I think that should be somewhat telling.
The only 2 seasons he didn't put up a bad GF% were 2 seasons he had an unsustainably high PDO (one being last year and the prior being his sophomore season). Also AZ has been one of the best teams in the league at getting good performances from cast-off depth players and tweeners, a lot of players who left that team went on to play worse for the team that followed.