Justin Faulk

This Season So Far

The 2023-24 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.

Last Season

11 goals and 39 assists in 82 games — 50 points — at 23:23 a night. Minus-4, 196 shots at 5.6 per cent, two on the power play, three game-winners, 34 penalty minutes.

50 points is a career high by one, in his twelfth season, and 196 shots is the eighth-highest total by a defenceman in this book.

43.7 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 9th percentile, across 1,528 minutes, with his ice at 75-77 against an expectation of 58.46-75.31 — seventeen goals more than the chances at the good end and almost exactly on the number at the other.

He started 58.7 per cent of his shifts in the attacking zone, the 86th percentile, which is the softest deployment given to any St. Louis defenceman but Torey Krug and makes the 9th-percentile chance share worse rather than better.

The Finesse Game

196 shots at a median of 44 feet, with 55 per cent of his attempts from beyond forty.

Beyond forty feet: 102 shots on goal and two goals — 1.96 per cent, well below the league rate for defencemen of 3.17. From twenty to forty: 60 shots and six goals, 10.00 per cent, above the league rate of 8.83. Inside twenty: 21 shots and three goals.

A hundred and two shots on goal from the point returning two goals, on the same blue line where Colton Parayko took ninety-three and returned none. Between them that is a hundred and ninety-five shots from beyond forty feet and two goals, from two right-handed defencemen with shots measured at 98.9 and 99.0 mph.

Faulk slaps 70 of his 253 tracked attempts, a 27.7 per cent share. Parayko slaps 38.8 per cent. Krug slaps 36.3. Three men, three different shares, and long-range conversion rates of 1.96, 0.00 and 2.56 — all of them below the positional rate, all of them on a club that shot from the point as often as any in the league.

The nine goals from inside forty feet are where the value is. 98.9 mph at the 94th percentile, and it has not helped from range in twelve seasons.

The Physical Game

6-0 and 208 pounds, and 3.10 miles a game at the 85th percentile at a top speed of 22.2 mph, the 47th, with 0.6 bursts above twenty a game at the 33rd.

High mileage from a modest top end at twenty-three minutes a night, which is the ordinary first-pair shape.

34 penalty minutes in 82 games and 409 in 842 career games. He plays a heavy game at the net front and takes the cross-checking minors that come with it.

He is punishing in front of his own goal and does not give up the position, which is the half of his game the chance share does not capture and the half a club is actually paying for at twenty-three minutes.

The Intangibles

Thirty-seventh overall in 2010, the second round, twelve seasons, 842 games, 396 points across Carolina and St. Louis, and a Stanley Cup in 2019.

124 goals and 272 assists, and a minus-55 that belongs mostly to seven seasons in Carolina.

He is thirty-one, playing twenty-three minutes on a club that has traded three of its best forwards, and 50 points at that age is a genuinely good offensive season.

The 9th-percentile chance share is the number that has to be said out loud. On a bad club, out of soft starts, at first-pair minutes, it is the worst of any defenceman on this roster and it has been below average for three straight seasons.