in his prime, desjardins was a top five d-man in the league, at least for a couple of seasons in the late 90s.
at the time, you would say that of his generation, lidstrom, pronger, and blake were ahead of him, but he'd be the fourth guy, ahead of niedermayer, zubov, gonchar, hatcher, and all the others. times change obviously, and it was a very weak era for high end d-men, but schneider was never that good and not nearly as complete a player.
schneider's longer career and higher offensive numbers don't make up the difference in peak, as schneider was pretty one-dimensional except for a couple of years in detroit. and was schneider really that much better in those years, or were they a system and lidstrom-aided mirage?
also, in '93 desjardins was awesome. i feel like his game 2 heroics get overshadowed by the mcsorley illegal stick call, roy's OT record, and leclair's two straight OT winners in games 3 and 4. but desjardins scored all three montreal goals-- including the winner in OT-- in the game that really swung the momentum of the series. they would not lose another game that spring. desjardins was easily the habs' best and most important d-man while schneider was injured during the first two rounds (the habs' toughest two rounds, in my opinion) and not really a huge factor that year, which was his only cup run.
there's also the fact that the wings finally broke through and made the finals in back to back years, and won the cup immediately after replacing schneider with rafalski.