Dunn should've had more of a chance here, but there were times the coaches gave him the chances with Petro, and it didn't work out, and that was after Bouwmeester/Parayko were handling the toughest of minutes. Would much prefer Dunn/Petro at the top than Krug/Faulk and that would probably be a similar type cost, at least a comparable amount.
Walman is what he is, a decent 3rd pair puck-mover, that has some skills, but not enough to regret moving.
I never agreed that it didn't work out with Petro. They would play well but then get broken up at the very first defensive lapse. They got really good results together in the 764 total 5 on 5 minutes they got together:
57% corsi, 56% shot percentage, 60% goals percentage (42 goals for and 28 against for a +14), 55% xGF%, 58% scoring chance percentage, and a 56% high danger chance percentage. You are completely right that they were used in the offensive minutes while Bo-Parayko did heavy lifting defensively, but those are exactly the results you want out of an offensive top pair.
It's incredibly frustrating to think about what the D group could look like simply by extending our own guys for contracts they got elsewhere and not making the moves for Faulk/Krug.
Dunn ($4M then RFA this summer)-Petro ($8.8 through 2027)
Eddy ($3.5M through 2024)-Parayko
Mikkola/Bortz/Rosen
Throw Scandella onto LTIR if you think we still felt the need to acquire him when Bo went down. If we still had Eddy at that point instead of Faulk, I don't know that we do. I'm not sold there is a single season where our actual D group has outperformed what this group would have looked like. I think this hypothetical group is much better suited to have picked up the slack to ease Perunovich into the lineup.
Petro/Dunn/Eddy combine for $16.3M while Faulk/Krug/Leddy combine for $17M. Dunn will be due a raise, so their salaries would go over the $17M number starting next year and who knows whether you could extend Eddy after next season. But I'd argue that those issues are less harmful than the length of time we've locked ourselves in to Krug/Leddy. This route would have changed the expansion draft, but it also would have allowed us to use Bokk in a trade to either influence who Seattle took or recover from who they took. If the team sucked this year, this group puts us in a better position for a retool than the current group.
Looking at the D we moved on from around the league is extremely frustrating when you compare them to our blueline. Petro is still a #1 D man and Dunn is showing that he is capable of being a complimentary piece on a top pair (with a partner who is not as good as Petro). I don't think Eddy (even with all the injuries) would have left us any worse off for our #4 D than we've been for years now (and probably better off if we had still brought in Scandella and let him and Eddy kind of spliut 4/5 duties).
Incredibly frustrating.
