I'm no expert, but I think league rules state that a team this size would have to forfeit the game.

Those Blues, winning the Cup, it's gone to their inflated heads. Think they can win with 11 man roster.

Just wanted to see if anyone would rather have parayko ...but thanks ...rest of the team is still partying I guess

Parayko

Parayko

Finally someone said it ...I'm not alone hahaha

I’m gonna go Parayko, but it’s a pretty thin margin. In terms of pure results with no context, Pietrangelo is better offensively by a decent amount whereas Parayko is significantly better defensively. However, there’s reason to believe that Parayko could be better offensively. He’s had to carry bad defenseman like Edmundson and Bouwmeester most of his career which significantly hurts his ability to drive offense and I think it’s not surprising that his best offensive impact year was his rookie season where he played primarily with a simple puck-mover like Gunnarsson. His offensive impact is also hurt because he shoots WAY too much. He takes over 23% of team shots at even strength which is good if you’re a forward with a good shot who’s consistently generating high-danger chances, but bad if most of your shots are from low-danger. If he distributed more, the Blues would likely create significantly more dangerous chances. I’ll be interested to see how they play this year over a full season considering last year how they sort of flipped rolls. Parayko took Pietrangelo’s roll which was to eat minutes against top-competition with a bad partner whereas Pietrangelo got a lot easier minutes with better partners like Dunn and Gunnarsson. I think this roll-switch was a huge part of the cup win because it optimized their skill sets. Parayko is a lot better than Pietrangelo at playing against top competition and Pietrangelo was absolutely dominant when he got to play against easier opponents. In the end I think it all comes down to what you value and how you utilize them.

Amazing response sir !! I gotta go parayko too ...but man it's close

The funny part of this is that you can expect Pietrangelo to put up more points and put himself in talks for the Norris again, proving that NHL awards are altogether stupid, points are mostly just noise, and Parayko is the GOAT.

It’s actually crazy how close they’ve been. They’re 7th and 8th in GAR since 2016-17.

NHL Network with their “zAcH wErEnSkI aNd JaCoB tRoUbA aRe ToP 20 dEfEnSeMaN”

I do think there’s at least a little value for points though. Pietrangelo is visibly more talented at both scoring and setting up goals which shows up somewhat in metrics like RAPM, but is probably more clearly shown in counting stats like points.

For sure, I agree. What I should've said is "points without context are mostly just noise". Too many times we see references to points when comparing defensemen that have different roles, different partners, different deployments, different ice time, etc. Fortunately for us, we have two top defensemen that play different stylistically and we don't have to worry about who's better or worse because they both adapt well to the roles we need from them.

Imo it’s also just incredibly hard to evaluate defenseman and I think that there’s stuff that are important to being a defenseman that people still haven’t quantified. I’m a stats guy, but I refuse to believe that Jay Bouwmeester would play 25 minutes a night for 60 straight games on the Stanley Cup winner if he was as bad as his metrics say he is. Like sure he’s getting carried by an elite partner and goaltending, but this isn’t necessarily a small sample size either and if he was legitimately bad the Blues would start hurting way more than they did. It just seems like having really good defensive metrics relates more to how well you can move the puck instead of how well you can actually defend. I think it would be an interesting study to find out more about “actual defense” and why teams win with guys like Bouwmeester who on paper are terrible.

Very true. The essence of defense is preventing things from happening. It's very hard to quantify how much of something didn't happen, though some of the entry/exit tracking stuff is interesting. Too much nuance to get close to a solid assessment. And as far as Bouw goes, my best guess is that some of his metrics are awful because he never shoots so his shot differentials are garbage. There were 141 d-men (out of 237 d-men with over 300 5v5 TOI) with a higher CA/60 than him; and only 30 with a lower CF/60. His style has become anti-analytical based on his inability to shoot, but he can still be effective in achieving a game-plan.

I wonder if it has to do with something that’s not yet calculated in expected goal models like maybe the ability to impede a shooter. Like yeah he’s giving up a lot of shots and shots from dangerous areas but maybe he’s doing enough to make the shooter take a worse shot. Idk I’m just spitballing, I think we’ll be able to learn a lot more with the puck and player tracking data whenever it comes out.