Carolina Hurricanes: How Good is Justin Faulk?
By Brett Finger
The pride of all Carolina Hurricanes fans is 23-year-old defenseman Justin Faulk, a player who continues to rise as one of the league’s best blue liners at a very young age.
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The South St. Paul, Minnesota native was drafted by Carolina in the 2nd round of the 2010 Entry Draft, and since breaking into the league in 2011, he has shown the potential to be a star in the NHL, but is this hometown bias? How good is Justin Faulk?
Well, in terms of production, Faulk is a fringe top-10 defenseman across the entire league. In 82 games played last season, Faulk finished with 49 points, which ranked 12th overall amongst qualifying players. That list included San Jose’s Brent Burns, who also spent time at forward.
Faulk had more points/points per game than Duncan Keith, Drew Doughty, Shea Weber, Alex Pietrangelo, and Oliver Ekman-Larsson, all of which are considered to be top-flight defensemen in the league. Faulk is also younger than all of those players.
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One troubling area of Faulk’s game was his plus/minus, however. He had -19 rating last season, and that was 14th worst of all qualifying defensemen, but there are a lot of factors there. The goaltending was certainly below average, his fellow blueliners were largely inconsistent, and the team had an incredibly disappointing season all around.
As we all know, production is only a small part of what it takes to be a great NHL defenseman. Another important part of being a defenseman is logging big minutes, one thing that Justin Faulk does pretty well.
Faulk ranked 16th amongst NHL defensemen last season in time on ice per game, logging 24:25 per game. He did finish behind guys like Ryan Suter, Erik Karlsson, Drew Doughty, and several other notorious high-minute defensemen.
At even strength, Justin Faulk logged 1,617:38 of ice time, good for 8th in the NHL. He also had the second shortest average shift length of all defensemen in that top-8 with 48 seconds per shift. Only T.J. Brodie of the Flames had less time per shift, and he averaged 47 seconds.
Flexibility and all-around game are also important traits in a defenseman. If you want to be an elite blue liner in the NHL, it’s almost imperative that you can play in all areas and be trusted in them.
Faulk led the Hurricanes in powerplay time on ice per game with 2:42 per contest. That ranked 34th in the NHL, but that looks better when you consider that the Hurricanes had just 240 powerplay opportunities, which ranked 21st out of 30 teams.
He averaged just over 1:00 of ice time per powerplay, which was better than 2 of the 10 defensemen in the top-10 in powerplay time one ice per game. Also, Faulk tallied 20 points on the man advantage, good for 12th among defensemen. He posted 0.08 points per powerplay. Erik Karlsson led the way in that category with 0.11 points per powerplay.
Carolina ranked 15th in the league in powerplay percentage.
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As for penalty kill time, Justin Faulk ranked second on the Hurricanes in total time on ice in those scenarios, behind just Ron Hainsey. Faulk played a total of 162:46 when the team was down a man, averaging to 1:59 per game. Hainsey averaged 2:01 per game in shorthanded situations.
Faulk ranked 101st amongst defensemen in penalty kill time per game, but the Carolina Hurricanes were the second least penalized team in the entire league, and the team killed off 84.7% of their penalties. That ranked 4th in the entire league, thanks largely to Justin Faulk and the team’s ability to be very well structured on the kill.
He also took just 15 minor penalties last season, and while that was the most out of all Carolina defenders, he was tied for 83rd in the league amongst all NHL defensemen.
So, Justin Faulk showed last season that he is a major contributor in all scenarios – even strength, power play, and penalty kill – but do his advanced numbers hold up?
According to his HERO chart, Faulk produced like a top-pairing defenseman, played number one minutes, and his impact on linemates was largely very positive.
Courtesy of Ownthepuck.blogspot.com
http://ownthepuck.blogspot.com/2015/02/horizontal-evaluative-ranking-optic.html
Using the chart above as reference, Faulk has certainly been a formidable top-pairing defenseman, if not an above average one. since 2013, and at the age of 23, that is extremely impressive.
The only category that is well-below top-pairing status on Faulk’s HERO chart is his impact on linemates corsi against per 60, which measures how many shots, shot attempts that missed the net, and shots that were blocked that opposition had when Faulk was on the ice per 60 minutes.
So, this means that opposing players had a lot of shot attempts with Faulk on the ice. Faulk’s on ice save percentage was also at a career low last season at just over 90% , which could be a testament to how poor and lackluster the goaltending was, but it could also be a testament to how Faulk still has growing to do.
A lot of his ice time came when the team was trailing as well, which means at times he was playing less conservative and more aggressive in the offensive zone in order to get more goals for the team. This would lead to more breakout chances for opposition
Chicago defenseman Duncan Keith won the Norris Trophy for the NHL’s best defenseman last season. Let’s compare his HERO chart to Faulk’s.
Courtesy of Ownthepuck.blogspot.com
http://ownthepuck.blogspot.com/2015/02/horizontal-evaluative-ranking-optic.html
Duncan Keith and Justin Faulk have been very similar in terms of impact on linemates corsi over the past three seasons, and it is worth noting that Keith is a veteran and Faulk is still very young.
Keith gets the nod in production largely because he has played with Brent Seabrook, a top-20 NHL defenseman, for a lot of the past few seasons. Faulk has played with guys like Andrej Sekera, Jay Harrison, Ron Hainsey, and several others. Keith has also been on two Stanley Cup winning teams since 2013, and Faulk has yet to play a game in the playoffs.
So comparatively speaking, Faulk and Keith offer a lot of the same stuff and both play at a very high level. I’m not trying to sell you that Faulk is as good or better than Keith, but the gap may be a lot smaller than people realize.
At a young age, Justin Faulk has emerged as one of the league’s premier defensemen. Playing on a small market team has sheltered him a bit from nation-wide media attention, but if he keeps performing at a high level and the Hurricanes can develop into a contending team, his name will be more well known across the league.
So far in his career, Faulk has proven that he is at least a top-15 defenseman and one of the best defensemen in the Metropolitan Division. With a good year in 2015-2016, he could launch himself into a comfortable spot amongst the top-10 blue liners in the NHL.