Defensive Pairing Two: Marco Scandella–Colton Parayko
On this line, we have two strong shutdown defenders. Colton Parayko has an incredible reach and the Blues have loved Marco Scandella’s play so much in 11 games that they gave him a contract extension.
In those 11 games, Scandella has nearly one defensive point share and a plus-four. He is a fantastic left defenseman to complement the big man.
Parayko on the other hand collected 3.6 defensive point shares and 28 points on offense. His plus-eight and 23 minutes of ice time per night show that he is not only capable of locking things down, but that the team trusts him to do so.
Both guys have the trust of the team and will most likely be the go-to lockdown defense line. Parayko and Jay Bouwmeester had that honor in 2019. I would not be surprised if this duo play a lot of minutes against the opposition’s top forward line since Scandella has filled in quite nicely.