If he's eating a lot of minutes he at least is sheltering guys who need to develop. I haven't looked at who he is deployed against and in what zones, but with the caliber of defense we have now, it'd probably just be someone else on the team being the whipping boy if it weren't him.
We just don't really have a top tier defensive pairing, probably at best an average to below average 2nd pairing, and the rest of 3rd pairing to 7th defensemen at best. Pretty much everyone is playing higher up in the lineup than you would like.