Erik Gudbranson was drafted third overall in the 2010 NHL Entry Draft. The two players taken ahead of him, Taylor Hall and Tyler Seguin, have played in the NHL All-Star Game. So has the man taken fourth, Ryan Johansen.

It would be a stretch, however, to call Gudbranson a star. A minute-munching, intimidating, stay-at-home defenceman, he hasn’t scored more than 13 points in a season.

But that is, apparently, what Vancouver Canucks general manager Jim Benning wanted when he traded young forward Jared McCann, along with second- and fourth-round picks in this summer’s draft, to the Florida Panthers for Gudbranson and a fifth-round pick.

The Canucks definitely have issues on defence, where Dan Hamhuis is expected to leave as a free agent after six years as a Canuck, and where Luca Sbisa posted the highest plus-minus rating of any defenceman on the team despite being a turnover machine for most of the year.

But a hulking (and Gudbranson is just that, at 6’5, 216 lbs) defensive rearguard isn’t necessarily going to change any of that. Gudbranson’s plus-3 on the third-best team in the Eastern Conference was the second-worst mark among regular Panthers defencemen, with only former Canuck Willie Mitchell coming in under that. Additionally, the Canucks had the league's fourth-least number of points from the blue-line this year, an area in which their new acquisition surely can’t be counted on to help.

Is there room to grow for Gudbranson? Perhaps. At 24 years old and with a strong pedigree, it’s not as though the future looks bleak for the Ottawa native who was thought of as possible captain material for the Panthers. At the same time, though, it can be argued that at this point in his career, Gudbranson is what he is. Assuming that’s true, the Canucks just acquired a second-pairing defenceman that will be able to take care of business in his own end for, hopefully, years to come.

Currently, Gudbranson makes a reasonable $3.5 million against the cap, but that number will go up after next year, when he becomes a restricted free agent, particularly with the news that he rejected a four-year, $18-million contract from the Panthers.

In centre Jared McCann, the 24^th overall pick in the 2014 draft, the Panthers have acquired a player who—as a teenager in the NHL this year—scored 18 points in 69 games while mostly playing on the fourth line. As an indication of how hard that is to do, only eight players from McCann’s draft year have scored more points thus far in their NHL careers.

What needs to be considered here are the Panthers’ recent personnel changes. On May 16^th, the team announced that GM Dale Tallon would be getting “promoted” to president of hockey operations while appointing new GM Tom Rowe as well as new assistant GMs Eric Joyce and Steve Werier. Although Tallon will still have final say on all hockey transactions, the move was said to be heavily based on a preference for future use of analytics.

Corsi, one of the most commonly used hockey-analytics tools, measures puck possession by tracking shot attempts for and against while a specific player is on the ice. Gudbranson, for what it’s worth, had a minus -6.8 Corsi relative, again, behind only Mitchell among regular Panthers d-men, which means that his team was outchanced when he was on the ice. He did, however, also have a high percentage of defensive-zone starts. McCann had a positive Corsi relative rating, coming in at 0.4.

Benning has shown throughout his tenure as Canucks GM that he is an adept drafter. In his first two years at the draft table he has netted promising youngsters like Jake Virtanen, Thatcher Demko, Nikita Tryamkin, Brock Boeser, and McCann. Of those names, Virtanen was the only one drafted in the top 20.

So why is he giving away additional chances at the draft table (that second rounder will be the 33^rd overall pick) along with steals he’s made (McCann) for a steady if unspectacular defenceman?

With the Sedins on their way out, this team will be in dire need of goals. Erik Gudbranson won’t be getting many of those.