Quoting: Mortarhead
just in highlights and (ill admit) by reputation from podcasts..oioinly watched him a couple times in last few years as I only watch leaf games, dont have time to spend watching other hockey sadly. tks for the info though, you did open my eyes to your point.
Heh. Okay, well just ignore most podcasts. They don;t watch him, either. Here's the deal...
Did Parayko have a down year in 22-23? Definitely. No doubt, no argument. Especially early in the season, when the whole team was playing ass. Most of these mistakes were passing/clearing attempts gone wrong, and not actual defensive play.
Was is it as dire as a lot of people who never watch him pretend to declare? Not even remotely close.
Parayko still played the hardest minutes of any Dman in the league, had one of the most shambolic partners in Leddy (who was to blame for a sizable majority of things Parayko got blamed for) and he still finished top 10 in the league in total defensive stops (something very few models take into account). And that's before we even get to things like the 30 (!!!) goals Blues players kicked/gloved/batted/deflected past Binnington last season or the staggering amount of horrid turnovers in terrible places committed by Blues forwards last season (again, mostly confined to the first half of the season). The sheer volume of plays he shuts down as easy as pie is massive.
If he gets a reliable partner, he will star again. Parayko is not the Blues problem and his contract is not an albatross by any stretch. If they give him a proper partner his contract will look like a bargain in no time and his playing style is one that tends to age more gracefully than others. All these fools you hear screeching that he sucks and his contract is an albatross never watch him play. Even the idiot Dom at The Athletic, who openly hates the Blues and loves to trash their players, somehow still imagines that Parayko plays a bruising physical style. After all these years and a damn Cup run, there's no excuse for him to not know how the guy plays. He's supposed to be this bigshot analyst/analytics guru, but he has ZERO clue.