Looking at the
last couple years of numbers with these criteria:
1) faces hard D-zone deployments
2) near the top in xGA/60 Rel (relative to teammates).
3) near the top in GA/60 Rel
These players look really good:
Alex Vlasic
Chris Tanev
A surprising name close to them is Juuso Valimaki. Another is Jake McCabe.
Artem Zub and Adam Fox don't have the hardest D zone starts but are much much better than their teammates at limiting xGA and GA.
Slavin surprisingly has team average results with easy zone deployment. Same with Heiskanen. I'm a bit surprised.
Pelech is playing hard minutes and giving up more goals than his teammates.
Radko Gudas is playing easier third pair minutes for the most part, and getting much better results than his teammates - but this is light duty and the other Ducks D he's compared to are largely kids. The raw numbers (not relative) are still good though.
Sanderson's results are relatively good but not too a huge degree, and being better than Chabot isn't saying much. And his raw numbers aren't good.
Ekholm's results are relatively good but it's really hard to tell when his usage is so offensive on the ice with McDavid and company. I'm giving it to him because of the eye test.
Hampus Lindholm is facing hard D zone starts and is still well ahead of his Bruins teammates in both categories, which is hard to do on a team like that.
Forsling's two year numbers don't stand out but he has by far the best raw goals against this year, so he's in.
So after all of that, my top ten (in no order) is:
Forsling
A Vlasic
Lindholm
Zub
Fox
Tanev
Valimaki
McCabe
Gudas
Ekholm