Edited Feb. 18, 2020 at 6:05 p.m.
Quoting: mokumboi
Faulk has barely played on the 3rd pairing. He's mostly been paired with Petro, and they were friggin' dynamite together. They need to be put back together.
And actually, his analytic numbers are better than Parayko-J-Bo's (though obviously they always got the toughest matchups and were more often out there with the checking line). That's not to say he's played better than Parayko, but it shows that analytics always need context.
I 100% agree that analytics always need context, I constantly argue with people on here about Pietrangelo's defensive ability because so many of the stats lack context.
That said, I'd push back on "freakin dynamite" a bit in regards to Faulk and Pietrangelo. They were decent offensively but leaky defensively, averaging almost as many goals for/60 as goals against/60. Analytically speaking, Pietrangelo's best partner has been Dunn. They've got the highest expected goals for with the lowest expected goals against, and that's accounting for context. (A lot of the narrative is that we only use Dunn and Pietrangelo in the offensive zone, but Dunn's zone starts at even strength are about 50/50, and he's a tad above average defensively on the whole at 5v5, and Pietrangelo doesn't get a ton of defensive starts anyway). Dunn should be playing with Pietrangelo, which makes more sense anyway in a handedness sense, which would bump Faulk from that line.
No disrespect to him considering the cirumstances, but I was actually one of the few people who said we should have let Bouwmeester walk last offseason. I understood why we didn't and he really was excellent in the back half of last season and the playoffs. But he was just okay this year and analytically he's just been awful. Like even with the context of "he's always going against tough competition" it's pretty bad, and he drags down Parayko with him. So I'm not super impressed with most defensive pairings being better than them.
Again, not personal to him either, but Faulk is what he is- a mediocre to average defensive player who takes an inordinate amount of shots compared to everyone else while converting on a low amount of them, meaning a lot of time he gives up possession and he takes away shots from more skilled players who are often closer to the net than he is who can fire off shots that have a higher chance of going in. He's a third pairing defenseman, maybe second on a bad team, and there's a reason Carolina got rid of him. He's elite at nothing, and you don't sign players who are elite at nothing to seven year deals, especially at that money with NTC. Even if he was good, if we have Pietrangelo (which, I hope we do) and Parayko, it's the same argument as keeping Allen- this is a hard cap league, and you simply cannot afford to pay a backup goalie or a third pairing defenseman several millions of dollars.
Faulk has played almost a third of his minutes this year paired with Dunn or Gunnarsson, and I would qualify those as third pairing minutes. While it's not the majority, it's certainly more than barely. And he's actually ok on those pairings. Some of the rest has been with Pietrangelo, most of it is with Bouwmeester. And that pairing is very not good.