I have him in front of Bouchard this year. He has more even strength goals, more even strength points, and plays more minutes. He's clearly better defensively than Bouchard and doesn't make 5-alarm turnovers almost every game. If Bouchard gets back to his 2024 playoff form, then that changes things. But right now Parayko is a better defenseman than Bouchard.
Parayko probably shouldn't be playing 24 minutes a night. But him paired with Nurse would give a legitimate 22 minutes a night on the second pairing, shave off a minute from Ekholm and Bouchard, and push Kulak down to 17 minutes with Klingberg.
All this is moot because I don't think there's any way they get Parayko.
I went into detail in a past post about Parayko. He's a high end shutdown defender and deployed as one with heavily tilted defensive zone ice-time, suppression responsibilities. Yet he still drives EV production. In fact he's their defense top point production even with only 1 PP point.
It's reinforced in NHLEdge where Parayko's zone time splits against team results are as follows:
Zone Time (All Situation)
O-Zone
Parayko: 40.1% NHL below 50 percentile
Team: 42.4% NHL 61 percentile
D-Zone
Parayko: 41.7% NHL below 50 percentile
Team: 39.6% NHL 67 percentile
*Zone Time (EV)
O-Zone
Parayko: 41% NHL below 50 percentile
Team: 42% NHL 64 percentile
D-Zone
Parayko: 40.2 NHL below 50 percentile
Team: 39.4% NHL 67 percentile
Yet he more than keeps his head above water relative to his team. 24:02 avg toi, +6 on team with -11 goal differential. This is a big minute goal suppression guy heavily weighted to team defending yet skilled enough to add offense with 32 points, 31 EV or SH, along with 13 goals. Add on his physical dimensions, elite speed, endurance, and shot measures. Just to add his point share stats show as 2.7 offensive results and 8.7 defensive for a +11.5 point share (that estimates the number of points contributed by a player).
He's an Ekholm style two-way defender on a way worse team. Bouchard is an entirely different defender with rare elite offensive abilities currently having some wobbles with own zone defending.
Would be a game changer slotting into a middle pair on a window team. But out of the Oilers trade collateral to acquire, if at all available.
EDIT: *Broke out Zone Time into All Situations and EV. not including PK Zone Time with skews even further defensive zone deployment