I really was impressed with the way Quenneville ran his blueline in the playoffs a couple years ago when they last won the Cup. They had four NHL defencemen and two scrubs, but they organized them into essentially 4 pairings, which they rolled:
1) Keith - Seabrook
2) Oduya - Hjalmarsson
3) Keith - Scrub1
4) Scrub2 - Seabrook
5) Oduya - Hjalmarsson
6) repeat
I found this really impressive. We've seen first-hand the conundrum of maximizing your top-4 only to be dragged down by an incompetent bottom pairing. This system still spread minutes, but never allowed a liability pairing to be out there with a game on the line.