The St. Louis Blues have announced that defenseman Justin Faulk has been activated from the injured reserve. Faulk missed the last 12 games with an upper-body injury.
Faulk has played 40 games this season for the Blues and scored two goals and 19 points in that span. He’s in the fourth year of the seven-year contract he signed with the team that began in the 2020-21 season. Last season was a career-year offensively for the veteran defenseman as he put up 11 goals and 50 points for the Blues, the latter being a career-high.
Faulk was originally selected in the second-round of the 2010 NHL Draft by the Carolina Hurricanes and played the first eight seasons of his career in Raleigh. Prior to the start of the 2019-20 season, Faulk was dealt to St. Louis along with a fifth-round pick in exchange for Dominik Bokk, Joel Edmundson, and a seventh-round pick.
Faulk has been known as a solid two-way defender who can put up points consistently while also being a strong defender in his own zone. He’s one of those players who is just consistently good for a very long time but has never won any awards and or been considered one of the best defenseman in the league. So far, he scored 126 goals and 415 points in 882 games for the Hurricanes and Blues.
The veteran arrived in St. Louis one year too late to be a member of the 2019 Stanley Cup championship team. He’s played in 38 playoff games and scored three goals and 17 points in those games. One of the reasons Faulk has largely stayed under the radar in his career is due to the fact that he didn’t play a single playoff game until he was nearly a decade into his career.
The Blues will be happy to have Faulk back in the lineup as they attempt to make the playoffs this year.
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