This narrative that Faulk/Krug are like baby deer against top teams and got played out of the building down the stretch has gotten out of control. I don't want them as the top pair. They aren't good enough together to be a top pair on a contender. But this notion that they can't even hang in the building is not based in reality.
As a pairing, they were on the ice for 9 goals for and 7 goals against at 5 on 5 from April 1 through the end of the season. Krug played 16 games in that stretch (he missed some due to injury) and 14 of them were against Colorado, Vegas and Minnesota. 8 of the 16 games were against top 3 offenses league-wide and another 6 games were against the league's 9th best offense. They were on the ice for 7 goals against in those 16 games and on the ice for 9goals for. They were not getting sheltered usage in this stretch (52% offensive zone starts and consistently out vs quality competition) and while their underlying numbers weren't at all good, they were better than Parayko's (who has been caved in statistically for most of his career because that is kind of just how it goes when you are asked to be a shut down pair).
Again, I do not view them as a good enough top pairing to contend, but everyone needs to stop pretending that they got supremely demolished when we played good teams. Krug had an even +/- in 6 of the 8 games vs Colorado and Vegas during that stretch. Playing those offenses to even when you're out there for 18-20 minutes at even strength is an absolute win and they did it in 6 of those 8 games.
I want to experiment with a Krug-Parayko and Scandella-Faulk as the top 4. They won't be successful if Berube insists on trying to use Parayko in a pure shutdown role, but I don't think Scandella-Parayko will be successful in that role either. I think we need to move away from the top 4 being a shutdown pair plus a scoring pair and instead try to have two balanced pairs. I don't see how you can confidently say that Parayko can't adequately cover for Krug unless you believe that Faulk and Parayko are roughly even defensively in their own zone. Faulk mostly sheltered Krug against the top lines this year and I think Parayko is good enough defensively to do a bit better. It will be a catastrophe if we're asking them to do nothing but shut down top lines, but that isn't what we should be doing if the other pair is Scandella-Faulk. Using the same logic that Krug is pathetic in his own zone, you have to believe that Scandella would improve Faulk's results in the defensive zone.
