In all your years watching hockey you have never heard anyone say if you dont notice a dman thats good?
The idea being they are not making mistakes
I love watching system play and defensive and breakout schemes. So I key on that lots. Sekera does not slot into the typical molds of shutdown D, PMD,. With D that are very good at this you do notice them reversing the puck consistently. Last season Sekera was used differently than his first season here where he struggled. A large part of that of course is the addition of Larsson. But an unmentioned part is how absolutely fantastic Talbot was last season. I watch teams that shut most stuff down, have for years. The Oilers weren't that last year, it was a lot about Talbot. It was also teams not playing us hard enough or exposing our weaknesses because the Oilers generally took the league by surprise last season.
The best description of an efficient D I ever heard here was that Chris Pronger was a "snowball catcher" like you've never seen before (thank you to a great former poster, ReverendOil for that description) You watch Pronger play and its poetry. A drive stopper, a guy that somehow, innately finds ways to stop rush after rush, possession after possession. Just catches everything and always in control. Now comparing any D to Chris Pronger is unfair and I'm not doing that, just that is what D perfection looks like. So that its one end of the range. Pronger would be the 10. In my book Sekera would be a 6 at best last season. Last season the team didn't specifically give him difficult assignments and his Own zone starts were only 50%. In short he wasn't getting the same responsibilities as someone like Larsson who is clearly a better D in every aspect.
But it is possible that my view of Sekera is skewed by generally poor play in his first season and awful play this season. Of particular concern is that a player that was brought in for some offensive savvy is supporting 1.3EVGF/60mins this season. A figure that is comically bad considering the team has elite players like McD and Draisaitl to play with. The only player with worse on ice GF is Pakarinen and its the one stat that keeps him being scratched. But Paks defensive numbers and pk are at least stellar. Its what gets him rotated in. Sekera's numbers this season are consistent with shouldn't even be playing.
Note I am NOT in favor of buyout I just would have wanted somebody different signed instead of Sekera who has never been the D we needed. In short we traded Hall for Larsson partly because Sekera didn't address the needs that Chia thought he might. Sekera hasn't even been serviceable as part of a shutdown pair the vast majority of his time here.