On this team, he is 3-4, but that's indicative of how shallow the D core is.
Those other trades are not very good, though. Manson is the only one where I think if you took him out, that team's group would actually lose something.
Again, for me, it's too steep of a price for him. No one here would trade Cowan for McCabe, and that's the kind of player you're hoping for with the first.
See, I'm perfectly fine with him in the 3 spot, problem is the 2 and 4 are missing. I guess we just fundamentally disagree on how good of player he is, because while I would not trade Cowan (he's got that hint of being something special), but I would have traded Sandin last year (and posted about doing so (I thought I did but can't find it),and I would gladly have traded a 1st+2nd for Make JcCabe with two more years at 2m this deadline. Another dman of that calibre would make a big difference.
Re the pick expectation
Dmen picked in the back half of the 1st
2015- Chabot / Juulsen / Larsson/ Carlsson
2016 -Chrychrun / Fabbro / Stanley/ Cholowski / Johansen
2017- Valimaki / Liljegren / Vaakanian / Joseph / Jokiharju
2018 - Smith/ Merkley / Miller /Beaudin /Lundqvist/ Sandin /Alexeyev
2019 - Harley / Thomson /Heinola / Bjornfot / Johnson
The odds of drafting a d man in the back of the 1st that can give you 3 years of 20min a night physical mid pair D is not high, and the odds of them doing it on their ELC/ cheaper than 2m is even lower.