Quoting: A_K
Trade Parayko? He is one of 15 defensemen in the NHL to play at least 2,000 5-on-5 minutes the past three seasons with a Corsi-for and expected goals-for percentage above 53. Those were his first 3 seasons. Normally, you can start to judge a defenseman after 200 NHL games… he’s at 242 and among the best 2-way defensemen in the league.
Why are you using xGF for past seasons when we have actual result to look at? His actual GF% for the past 3 seasons is 53.64%, but if you look more closely it's due to having a great rookie year. In the past 2 years his actual GF% was 49.27%, which is NOT indicative of being "among the best 2-way defensemen in the league." His defensive play over the past 2 years looks like this:
2016-17: 2.11 GA/60, 84th best d-man in the league, just behind Cole, Ouellet, Methot and Beaulieu.
2017-18: 2.38 GA/60, 128th in the league, just behind Schenn, Bogosian, Hagg and Cole.
I'd say these numbers show he isn't able to handle the faster, highly skilled forwards of the league, assuming he's getting more and more elite assignments as he gets older.
His offensive play over the past 2 years looks like this:
2016-17: 2.42 GF/60, 75th in the league, just behind Del Zotto, Lindell, Yannick Weber and Methot.
2017-18: 1.97 GF/60, 194th in the league, just behind Pateryn, McCabe, Beaulieu and Emelin.
One could say that he really isn't covering his $5.5M contract at this point. Hopefully he rebounds this season, but things are trending the wrong way badly. All the hype surrounding this player is based on his first season only.