Feel free to disagree. I personally don't like Orlov and his defensive breakdowns because of 1) them almost always leading to grade A scoring chances against; 2) them almost always being 1 on 1 situations which even further exposes him as unreliable d-player; 3) him not getting elite offensive numbers to excuse all that. Re Karlsson: he's bad defensively. He's a bad player off the puck, he would look even worse had he played on the west like 5-6 years ago. All my points about his weaknesses stand, I don't mind if somebody is fallen in love with the guy and sees him differently. Also even more adamant about Doughty and Hedman being two best D in the league by quite a margin. Nobody close if you take into account both o and d sides of the game.
Orlov struggles some 1v1 on the rush, that doesn't make him weak defensively and doesn't make him bad against "high forechecking teams." It means he has a specific defensive weakness that he needs to work on. It's like saying Backstrom isn't the best straight-line skater and he has a bad slapshot, therefore he's a poor offensive player. Orlov's shots against, chances against, and goals against are near the best on the team while getting the hardest ES minutes. If the puck doesn't end up in or on the net with high frequency
Also while his offensive numbers aren't elite, most of that is due to him not being a significant PP player. Orlov's ES production/60 over the past 3 seasons is 12th in the NHL out of 176 qualified defensemen, behind only Karlsson, Burns, Hedman, Hamilton, Klingberg, Josi, Markov, Ellis, Byfuglien, Carlson, and Subban. Orlov is a fantastic ES producer and he's in some really good company.
Regarding Karlsson: I think the problem that people have with him is that they downplay his huge offensive contributions because maybe he's slightly below average defensively. If he individually drives a positive goal differential due to his offensive contributions who cares how many goals he gives up from his defensive play? No one cares that Ovechkin or Crosby aren't very strong defensive players because they are excellent at putting pucks in the net. Why should we treat Karlsson differently? *waits for "he's a DEFENSEman" argument*