After much rumor and innuendo, 27-year-old defenseman Justin Faulk is on the move from the feisty Carolina Hurricanes to the reigning Stanley Cup champion St. Louis Blues. Does Faulk make the Blues a lot better? Did the Hurricanes get a strong enough return? Let's break the deal down for both sides:
St. Louis Blues get: defenseman Justin Faulk and a fifth-round pick in 2020
Carolina Hurricanes get: defenseman Joel Edmundson, forward Dominik Bokk and a seventh-round pick in 2021.
St. Louis Blues: B
This is a bit of a conundrum for the Blues. In the short term, adding Faulk over Edmundson to this defense corps gives St. Louis a remarkably deep group. Who else in the NHL even approaches Alex Pietrangelo, Colton Parayko and Justin Faulk on the right side?
Properly deployed, Faulk can be an asset. His offense, while overrated, still produces 0.25 individual expected goals per 60 minutes at 5-on-5, which would have put him at the top of the Blues' defense in that category last season. His 0.91 points per 60 minutes at even strength was right around what Pietrangelo produced and well ahead of what Edmundson produced (0.57).
Faulk is also better on the power play, though it's by default here because Edmundson wasn't used that way. He was Carolina's top point producer with the man advantage: 3.75 points per 60 over the last two seasons, which is just a tick under what Pietrangelo (3.89) and Parayko (3.85) produced with the Blues.
Where Faulk falters is on the defensive end, where he was on the negative side in metrics relative to his Carolina teammates nearly across the board. Edmundson was the opposite, on the plus side in shots allowed and scoring chances against. Faulk is very good in one zone. Hint: It's not the one with his goalie standing in it.
That said, the Blues know what they have with this group. That's why they kept it together, sans Patrick Maroon and now Edmundson. The window is wide open for the Blues to repeat as Stanley Cup champions. GM Doug Armstrong told me on Tuesday morning before the trade that in order to shake up a defending championship team, to keep things fresh, it usually requires "trading away a core player" and that you get to a "certain level of player who doesn't have that swagger in the room, those are the players that end up switching teams."
Edmundson was very much not a core player. Faulk just became one. To that end, in the short term, that's a win for Armstrong.
But let's be real: The conundrum of this trade is less about what Justin Faulk is than what he's going to be over the next eight years. The Blues signed him to a seven-year contract with an average annual value of $6.5 million, as he would have been an unrestricted free agent next summer. Putting aside what this means for the Blues' pending UFA Alex Pietrangelo -- but seriously, what does this mean for pending UFA Alex Pietrangelo? -- the Blues have just committed a good chunk of cap space to a player who has already shown some diminishing returns at 27 years old.
Good for now. Weird for later.
Carolina Hurricanes: B+
The Hurricanes needed to move Faulk for something, as he clearly wasn't in the plans beyond this season. It was the right thing to do for them and the right thing to do for him, as he's been a good soldier for the franchise during some very lean years.
His trade protection complicated things. The Hurricanes would be a better hockey team if Ondrej Kase of the Anaheim Ducks was in their forward group. But Faulk nixed a trade to Anaheim. Such is life.
St. Louis was on his trade list, and the Blues were a team willing to do an immediate long-term deal for his services. Again, you play the hand you're dealt if you're the Carolina Hurricanes. A desperate Winnipeg team might have anted up something better if Faulk would commit to the Jets for seven more seasons after this one. But that wasn't in the cards.
Edmundson had a really rough postseason for the Blues, which obscured the good things he did during their regular season. He's a better defender than Faulk, and in a limited role should thrive in that defense corps in Carolina. He's physical. He's also cheaper, which is a win here for the Hurricanes: Faulk's cap hit was $4,833,333, while Edmundson makes $3.1 million before hitting UFA status next summer.
Bokk was No. 80 in the most recent ESPN prospect rankings from Chris Peters, who had this to say: "Bokk has a ton of skill and now will be playing on a new team in Sweden. But he has to continue to get stronger and more assertive to make good on the first-round pick St. Louis used on him in 2018."
Again, there were only so many options for the Hurricanes here. But ultimately, they made the best choice: Not handing Justin Faulk $6.5 million annually over seven seasons.