Jim Rutherford traded for Gudbranson from Vancouver - Tom Wilson has to be in the back of Rutherford's mind. Gudbranson is one tough hombre. Impressive list of "wins" on hockeyfights.com
Gudbranson is an interesting character, to say the least. He was the 3rd pick in the 2010 draft, by FLA. In 6 full years plus parts of 2 others in the NHL he has never averaged less than 17;59 TOI, has averaged over 20 MPG twice, so he has been PLAYED as a top-6 forward, time wise. He has scored in double digits in points only once in his career, has never had double digits in either goals or assists, and is a career -97 +/-. He has had plenty of opportunity to play and has never made anything of it. Now you can say he's been part of not-so-good teams, but when you are a #3 pick you are supposed to be one of the guys who helps pull your team out of mediocrity. Everything suggests that the man simply doesn't have the skills.
I suspect that if he were our player, he would have been pushed into the volcano years ago, with a tremendous uproar about what a waste of a #3 draft pick. WHY has this man been given all this ice time?? Tom Wilson, when he was cast as a 4th line tough guy, did better than THAT in half the ice time.
The current pick for volcano on the Caps is Burakovsky, a #24 pick I believe. In reality, for the Caps he is probably sort of their version of Brett Connolly pre-Caps -- and Connolly was a #6 pick when he was drafted. Connolly is a career +1 +/-, and Burakovsky is a career +27 so far. This has been the first year that Burakovsky has been a negative +/-, which suggests that, at least defensively, he is probably not a huge liability. And to my eyes at least, he isn't. He is reasonably disciplined on defense without the puck, back checks pretty well (though with finesse, not strength), and his +/- performance seems to dovetail with that. The complaint with Burakovsky seems to be predominantly on the offensive end, and I will admit it is pretty frustrating to watch. People ask why he hasn't been banished to the bench or better yet, to some other team. It may be that he has been competent enough defensively that the team continues to wait for him to break out offensively, realizing that at worst, he isn't costing them an arm and a leg defensively.
OOPS -- correction. Burakovsky was a #23 pick.