Romang67
BitterSwede
Why Quality of Competition doesn’t matter to analytics experts anymoreIt's usage.
Look at how much more ice time Josh Morrissey gets against first line players compared to Pionk, who see's about average ice time for a defenseman against top line forwards.
Pionk isn't outplaying Trouba. Pionk has racked up more assists because he gets PP1 time, Trouba does not. Pionk has better underlying numbers because he gets a lot easier usage compared to Trouba (and the aforementioned Morrissey).
Trouba and Morrissey are consistently deployed against first line players, Pionk is not. Both Trouba and Morrissey's underlying numbers have declined because they went from having better partners (themselves) to much worse ones (Brady Skjei is horrific, not sure about Tucker Poolman don't watch him enough).
The impact of QoC is, at best, unclear. And Pionk's D partner is definitely worse than both Skjei and Poolman, though none of them is good.