Frankly I was expecting a harsh sentence. He was caught with his open laptop, signed in to silk road with admin account. They had all the evidence and logs from his laptop to prove anything they wanted.
It was very clear from the beginning that he couldn't get away with it and teh court will try to set an example out of this case to warn other dark web markets.

If he wasn't caught red-handed, then he could have had bigger chance to get out of it.