Our defense top 4 was extremely uneven with highs and lows last season.
The most consistant all season was probably Rielly even though I thought he may have played his worst hockey of the season early in the Boston series, he bounced back and finished the series strong. He's going to be on the top pairing for a long time and is not really a worry unless you expect him to be a Karlsson or something.
Gardiner is what Gardiner is. He is mostly brilliant and has that odd game where he has a rough game and too bad for us that it happened to be THAT game. Most of the board saw him as our best dman before that game so he was a real good player for us overall. He is a great number 3 on any team and I hope we keep him but the price has to be right.
Zaitsev had some real problems with injury and rumored personal issues and was a shell of what we thought he could be until late February when he got over his leg injury and his analytics spiked, peaking as one of our best playoff performers. His continued solid play at the worlds and a 30ish game sample size of playing well overall gives me hope that he is over what was troubling him and he would be a solid long term number 4.
Hainsey looked like a helluva pickup midway through the season but then the massive workload we were subjecting him to along with the crazy load from the prior season started to show and he ended the season on a real low note, almost a reverse of Zaitsevs season. I think he could still be an effective player for us with a more targeted approach to his icetime. I'm not a fan of keeping him in the top pairing.
Pretty much on board with finding a solid partner for Rielly and I'm happy with running those next year....not saying that's going to be easy though. Expect to lose some nice pieces to get it done.