Weird they keep them as third pairing then.
If they’re one of the best pairings in the whole nhl - what a terrible coaching decision to not give them more ice time.
Or maybe Samberg paired with anyone is extremely high defensively
And - they are sheltered minutes against teams 3rd and 4th lines.
Don’t get me wrong, still great and impressive how they are doing. I think it needs some context and worth calling out some defensive numbers actually improved when Schmidt was out and Stanley and Chisholm were in.
samberg wont play ahead of morrissey. he-schmidt should be playing a bit more though at probably dillon-pionk's expense. however, it's not like the 2nd pair has been really bad. at 5v5: Samberg is at 12:52 per gp, Dillon is at 15:33. can another minute+ or so from dillon/2nd pair go to the third pair? probably
as for defensively, the Jets w/ samberg + either chisholm or stanley perform worse than samberg-schmidt in CA/60 and xGA/60, granted v small minutes probably not enough to conclude how bad or good they are.
using 355 mins (minimum of 10% less of samberg-schmidt) they're the 2nd best pair in the league in-terms of xGA/60 (ofc contextual factors you mention like linemates or comp play a role).
looking at last season:
dillion-schmidt were the best defensive pair on the Jets (2.13 xGA/60).
samberg-schmidt were the 2nd best (2.48 xGA/60). a lot of their xGF% value come from their xGF which i think can be argued is more of an influence from the Fwds you're playing with.