For Ronning On Empty:
My thoughts on the Grandlund trade are predicated on the following points:
1) Shinkaruk's was not increasing in value when he was traded. His value was low after his poor D+1 season in the AHL and his D+2 season going less than PPG didn't do much to improve it. This means that I did not at the time see Shinkaruk as an asset that was increasing in value as to increase in value, to me, would mean to be worth more than the late 1st rounder we used to acquire him. Personally, I see his value at the time of the trade as close to a late 2nd round pick or an early 3rd.
2) Calgary had mishandled Granlund as they had with Baertschi. I don't think it can be debated that Calgary didn't know what to do with prospects that looked to be 2nd/3rd line tweeners. With Baertschi it seemed like they wanted to coach his offense out of him and with Granlund they saw him as a depth center instead of a middle six winger. As such, they failed to get the most out of Granlund and ignored the flashes of good play he had. This means that combined with his good AHL numbers, increased size versus Shinkaruk, and enhanced development due to being older than Shinkaruk I value Granlund as being more likely to make the NHL as a middle six winger than Shinkaruk who I saw as top-6 or bust.
3) Granlund couldn't be counted on as a free asset. While Granlund may have been waved some 8 months after we traded for him we couldn't have been sure of getting him. For one, we couldn't be sure which teams might finish below us as the season had enough time left that standings at the bottom of the league could have changed significantly. Also, if we stood firm on trying to get him for free/lesser assets another team may have traded for him leaving us holding onto an obviously unwanted Shinkaruk.
4) Granlund is not a finished product. Granlund at 24 is only a year older than Shinkaruk and likely hasn't yet played his best NHL season yet. This means that we may yet find that we turned a busted prospect into an average 2nd liner who can PK, line up as a PP shooter, and slide between your bottom three lines as matchups dictate.
5) We traded Shinkaruk for above the expected value of a late 2nd early 3rd round pick (51-15 to 61-70) on
[url=
http://www.tsn.ca/statistically-speaking-expected-value-of-nhl-draft-picks-1.317819]this list[/url]. These picks have about a 30% chance of becoming a player and those players tend to end up closer to Granlund than anything better. Even at the time Granlund wasn't tracking to bust out of the NHL so trading for him lowered the ceiling of our potential assets while raising the floor to close to an 80% chance of at least getting another 100 above replacement level NHL games out of Granlund.
6) HFBoards overvalues draft picks. The odds of getting even a top 50% second liner from a second round pick is less than even the 35% odds of getting a 100 game NHL player from that pick. Another way to look at the draft, outside of top 15 picks, is to look at what the player drafted there would be worth 2 years later. Doing this it's easy to see that most second round picks don't retain value well let alone lower round picks. While it's true that every rare while you pull a Zetterberg or a Hansen from very late picks, or get a Shea Webber from a 2nd rounder these are exceptions to the rule and we should seek a mix of scratching tickets and trading them for higher odds of getting any hit at all.
7) We can still trade Granlund for close to Shinkaruk's expected value from the original trade. An asset like Granlund who's shown versatility, potted ~20 goals, and who had above average advanced stats on an awful Canuck team last season is the type of asset teams making a playoff run want to add to their third line. Depending on how he does this season Granlund could easily be worth a 2nd round pick or a later pick and a weak/late-blooming prospect as soon as this TDL.
In short, I feel that Shink was a declining asset which we traded for an ascending one.