Dahlen was nowhere near the caliber Brannstrom is considered today. He wasn't even in our top 5 prospects at the time. He more of in the Jonathan Davidson tier if we were to compare to a prospect we currently have. But he had red flags at the time, which were pretty obvious. Only the stat watchers over-rated him.
Either way, my point stands: If Dorion's worst trades can be considered "at best they were draws" like you say, he must be doing a pretty damn good job. If his worst trades are draws and his best trades are robberies (see: Brassard and Dzingel), then he's doing a great job.
Just look at what San Jose gave up to Vancouver for Hansen the same week we traded with Vancouver for Burrows. That's way worse than anything Dorion has done. Yet everyone keep praising Wilson like he's some sort of god. Every GM makes bad trades, and Dorion has kept them to a minimum.
I think one of the challenges about debating trades is agreeing upon how your evaluating the trade.
1) You can evaluate the trade based on the arbitrary value of the assets at the time of the trade.
2) You can evaluate the trade based on the actual values of the assets for a period of time after the trade.
Example:
If you trade a 2nd round pick straight up for the 1s overall pick...that would be a steal based on #1.
If you pick Yakapov with the first overall and the other team uses the 2nd to pick PK Subban...then that would be a steal based on #2.
The fact is that you can have a trade like the Dahlen trade where many will believe that according to #1...we lost the trade because they can make the case Dahlen had much more value at the time than Burrows and we should have gotten something that had more value than Burrows. AND of course you can say that based on #2, we won the trade because whatever we got out of Burrows was more valuable than anything from Dahlen if he indeed busts.
So you can have it both ways and therefore if you want to claim victory for Dahlen based on method #2, then you should probably also wait a little longer before claiming victory on Dzingle in the same way.
In terms of PD...I think if you look at all his trades/work the trend is pretty clear. He's good with young/amateur talent. No question. He knows how to draft. He seems pretty good at leading development. And his ability to project out how kids are developing will help us get better value on some trades where we trade young for old (Dahlen).
I just don't thing that this makes up for his other deficiencies, primarily his lack of leadership skills. Small markets can punch above their weight with better team cultures. Murray had that with the pesky sens. I have 0 faith in Dorion's ability to get a large group of adult men pulling in the same direction.
If PD is all we can get because nobody else wants to work with EM that doesn't mean he is a good GM and should be praised. It means he's lucky to have a job, the owners an ass, and the NHL has a major problem because when nobody around the league with credibility wants to work with you, you begin to feel isolate and angry at the league...which could result in wild-card actions/statements that the league doesn't want...and I would bet that under the circumstances the league would probably want to put in place another adult in the team to prevent this getting worse.
Of course I could be wrong. Maybe PD is pretty good at his job. Of course, knowing that his is the lowest paid GM in the league, if he is pretty good at this job...do you think another team tries to poach him away from Melnyk this summer? Why not?