3rd round picks have a 12% chance of making the NHL, an 8% chance of playing more than 100 games in the NHL.
The numbers can rationalize all sorts of routine trading of picks outside of the first two rounds and they certainly have tossed away a lot over the years. It's not a killer price but it's also not necessarily a sensible move given the type of players they have in Djoos/Bowey, Kempny's own inexperience and sheltered role to this point in his career and their continued need for a deeper pipeline. We don't really know if he'll help the blueline much. He should be serviceable depth but a third is a fairly high price for a player who hasn't been able to stick as a regular this season, even if they may believe his analytics suggest further upside. The timing suggests he must have been really high up on their list to jump now rather than wait and, again, maybe there's something there. The AAV certainly fits with their current constraints but at this stage of the season it's hard to be fully patient and mix/match down the stretch.
Mostly it's that they have more pressing execution matters to focus on in order to make bigger strides than adding another likely depth defender. They're not mutually exclusive acts but it's just another sign of wastefulness if all that gets adjusted is Kempny with Carlson and Orpik with Djoos or something. There's more fundamentally wrong with them from a pace standpoint than combinations. Again, it's not a huge price to give up in isolation but when it's a habit (trading for Graovac, etc.) it's somewhat troubling and that's not even getting into last season's aggressiveness at the deadline or their other questionable losses last off-season. It's also subtracts an asset should something more significant arise closer to the deadline if the market swings. Any other move will need to subtract a roster player and there are some other assets but I'm surprised it took quite this much for a player that doesn't have much of an NHL track record and wasn't strongly in the mix for Chicago. Again, maybe it's a steal for them and they certainly have given up more for older, worse players but it still seems a bit questionable. Maybe they're not done but even if they're not I'm not sure this is a player they had to secure given his inexperience level and sheltered role to date. I'm also not sure it's the best sign organizationally if it happens to have been motivated less by Kempny's positives than a fear of playing two rookies. Orpik/Bowey likely would have gotten torched in the playoffs but so would a lot of their usual habits and this probably doesn't do much at all to change that dynamic. That's not to say anything short of that has no value but I'm not sure it provides more value than (speculatively) a cheaper, more experienced option like Oduya or Holden. Maybe they just see Weber/Gleason in those guys. We'll see.
