Speculation: 3x NHL All Star & co-captain, Justin Faulk

pylon17

Registered User
Jan 19, 2017
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I am a big fan of Faulk. You watch him a helluva lot more than me. I've seen him a handful of times and was always very impressed, reminded me of a poor man's Doughty both in build and play style.

I've been trying to find some reasons for his down year thus far. The shooting % is down but a regression to the mean is forthcoming. Your blueline is beyond stacked so quality of minutes are changing. Pro players are people too and he's got a great attitude and leadership.

There's my 2 cents. Mind sharing yours?
 

Stickpucker

Playmaka
Jan 18, 2014
15,080
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Really hard to say. A few thoughts:

*It seems like in years past the whole focus of our PP was to get the puck to Faulk to let him rip it....not so much this season
*Faulk played a lot with Hainsey who is gone and he's hate quite the rotating door of D partners this year leading him to be more defensively minded (Hanifin/Dahlbeck)
*He seemed to thrive being "the guy" and with Slavin/Pesce he isn't...and I think that affects him mentally.
 

MinJaBen

Canes Sharks Boy
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Dec 14, 2015
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Personally, I don’t think he ever fully recovered from his knee/leg injury. His mobility has seemed to steadily declined since that injury and I think it is affecting both his ability to play defense like he used to and also his ability to slide laterally along the blue line to get off his shots.
 

bleedgreen

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Dec 8, 2003
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I think he’s actually becoming a smarter defender. I haven’t minded him in his own end as much as other years. He seems to be learning how to keep it simple in getting the puck out of the zone, where he use to cause some really egregious turnovers. He still makes some but I don’t see them as much.

I think he’s hit a weird plateau. He’s had to find a different role with all the new guys. He isn’t the only guy back there now, and the team no longer shapes everything around him. I don’t think he has a bad attitude about it at all, I honestly think he’s not sure who he’s supposed to be. He can’t find a partner to play well with, because he’s between being a steady veteran minding the shop and the former big offensive producer who’s supposed to push the play. He seems tentative in when he’s supposed to jump in.

At his best he’s that second layer of offense driving behind the initial rush, picking up a late puck and charging in straight lines to the net to rip that nasty shot of his. On the pp he would just snap everything on net. He’s not the focal point of the pp anymore which has hurt the numbers of course too. He doesn’t have the lateral skating to be a playmaker on the pp, only the shot. He’s still out there but guys like TT, Lindy and Aho do the primary playmaking now and they do not use the point for shooting as much as they try to make quick plays around the net to each other from down low. It’s a nice change of pace to have the skill but I hope in time they find a good balance of using his shot and making those plays.
 

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