But they're different types of defenseman. I put a priority on defenseman who can shut down the opponents top scorers, and Faber does that better than both of those guys while still being a valuable offensive player.
Faber is not a shutdown defensemen by any metric. Shutdown defensemen don't see the 3rd-most pucks go into his net from his position for half the season and counting. Shutdown defensemen don't have below average possession numbers near the bottom of his team. Shutdown defensemen don't play nearly half the game for a team, only slightly improve the expected 5 on 5 goals against when he's on the ice, and yet still give up more goals than most teams. And the kicker? His team's expected offense is only slightly improved when he's on the ice. Your definition of valuable offensively must be a lot wider than mine.
Without Faber, Minnesota wouldn't even be sniffing at the playoffs. They'd be around where Chicago is.
That's a ridiculous assertion that no logic or stat supports. Ironically in order for your hypothetical to be true, it would mean that Kaprizov, Boldy, JEE, Zuccarello, Brodin, Etc. are garbage and are essentially about equal to the trash that Chicago is icing on a daily basis.
Faber plays with the 4th best D man and then gets half his time with top 6 and half his time with the Wild’s bottom 6 forwards, which has been entirely AHLers. We have a very significant sample of how Faber looks playing with bad players, the coach trusts him in those scenarios for a reason.
By nature (4 forward lines, 3 D pairings) defensemen
always play with a variety of forward talent. They have to play with top lines and bottom lines. The fact of the matter is that Faber has played nearly his entire season with a solid to very good partner (Brodin or Midddleton), and he's played a very healthy amount with top forward talent in Kaprizov, Boldy, Ericksson Ek, Zuccarello, etc. That absolutely matters when deciding who's had the better season. There's no comparing Faber's teammates to Bedard's. Any attempt to do so just shows an extreme bias toward Faber.