Quoting: ChiHawk
The gap between offensive d men and stay at home d men is usually not as wide as it is in the case of Barrie. Erik Karlsson as example is more balanced despite being slanted more towards offense.
That said, as I noted in a earlier comment, Barrie's defensive stats are a result of his pairing and the team around him filling in that defensive gap...that's what good coaches do is make adjustments to play to a player's strength and use the scheme and other players to match together to overcome the player's individual deficiencies.
My point with Barrie is he's not good defensively if you watch him. While he's not "awful" he's not good. Offensively he's good, but his numbers are highly inflated by the PP and playing with Drais and McD who are arguable two of the best PP players in the league.
I'm not saying Barrie is worthless for the record in a trade, but another post mentioned he has 30 points and my comment was to quantify why and to also note his defense is below average....giving a balanced picture of who Barrie is meaning; he's not EK. In the right scheme and right pairing, he can be just fine, but let's not pretend he's EK.
So comparing Barrie to EK is like comparing jones to hedman they are an entirely different class of defenseman. (yes i know EK had a couple rough years after injury and trade but i would suggest those are the outlier not the norm)
I am not sure if you have watched the oilers much or not. they have tried Nurse and Bouchard on the PP with MCd and Dri and they struggle so to suggest barrie is only being propt up by them is foolish. Yes he plays with great players on arguably the best performing PP in NHL history but he is a significant part to it. if he wasn't he would have already been traded and bouchard taken his spot.
people think you can put who ever with those 2 and they will produce that is simply not the case and winger after winger has shown that.
I would also suggest barrie helps out his line and partner while he may struggle breaking up a cycle he is great at moving the puck and getting it to his forwards.
Still not sure why you are bringing up EK makes no sense and no one is ever making that comparison. now if you want to compare to savard which is who this trade was for we can have that discussion.
where i will stick with barrie for what he brings on the PP and 5 on 5 over what savard has done. you can look at
@CD282 for that.