this is what happens when you write a conclusion to your thesis before the hypothesis

Thought you'd see the little banner under my name saying "watches no games" but alright. I actually have the feeling bruins fans are some of the people disagreeing most with my thoughts

No it isn't. And even if it was, it would be arbitrary and dumb. "Forward" and "Defenseman" are names of positions, not separate objectives while on the ice. The objective is to score more goals than your opponent scores on you.



I don't make that assumption, and I actually agree with that sentiment. That's why ROR is below a lot of those guys, but a guy who's great at both scoring and prevention like Couturier is really highly rated.

You justified some of your decisions with defensive play but then you put Toews on there like you haven't seen him in the last few yrs when he abandoned all defense. And krejci who has never really played much defense

Not only is this not true, but he's actually not bad on offense either. He and Saad hit a lot of posts and struck some ridiculously low shooting luck along with Crawford being generally poor with them on the ice for no other apparent reason.

Having the same objective doesn't mean that you have the same role. Goalies do not contribute to goals scored; so that must mean that their defensive play is overshadowed by their lack of offense, right?

Yeah but Couturier doesn't score enough to be in this conversation. I don't have a problem with valuing defense in when deciding who is best. But to pretend like it's an equal "split down the middle" thing is just ridiculous because the different roles.

6th worst xGA/60 in the league last season for guys with over 500 toi but you're saying his 102 PDO makes him snake bitten?

If a goalie let 10 goals in but scored 20 every game he'd be the most valuable player in the league. I don't get how you can't construct these scenarios to get the philosophy behind what I'm saying. Now, realistically, goalies don't contribute to offense, but if they did that would be a valuable aspect to their game, of course, and it's not that hard to understand.

Couturier scores at a pace of most of these guys while being in the top percentiles of defense. I don't even agree entirely to split it down the middle, cause offense is typically more repeatable, and thus predictable of player skill. But acting like it's some small minority compared to offense is ridiculous, and if you don't understand the arguments I've made for this 3 times already, I don't know what to tell you.

Even if we give defense 75% of the value of offense, let's say Couts being some 85th percentile on offense and 95th on defense is WAY better than McDavid being 99th on Offense and about 5th on defense. Even if Couturier was actively bad at scoring, we'd be able to have this conversation about who's better - because Connor is actively bad at defense. Luckily, Couturier isn't, he's actually great at both.

I haven't updated on last season, and I'd rather check out a 3 year moving average or whatever, but if he's really bad this year then I don't mind removing him from the list. It's a good catch if that's the case and my bad for not being updated!

No worries I was surprised (but happy heh) to see his decline when I was comparing how hes been to ROR. Toews had some unstoppable years but he or his system or both have just abandoned defense these days.

It might also be blurred by Saad who's very good at that exact thing, too (unless I need to update on that as well, but I'd assume no since Colorado is way more aware of this than me personally).

I'm also just intuitively going a bit away from convention - I knew ROR was *VERY* good when he left Buffalo, but I also didn't try to slot him into some top 5-10 C list just because he won a cup. He's been steadily great and just outside of that range as far as I'm aware.

With the same sentiment, I try to push back on people saying Toews turned into garbage because Chicago did, when in reality they're probably the same people who tried to say he was the best in the league 7 years ago.

Yeah I've pegged ROR around the 10-15 range and toews probably recently got pushed out of my top 25 but hes not totally washed

Cmoney
MacK
Sid
Drai/AM34
Drai/AM34
Eichel
Nuff said

I understand that but the whole point I am making is that defensive forwards do not have the control over the defensive game that offensive forwards have over their offense.

The problem with the Couturier argument is he really isn't that great at scoring. If he got 95+ points annually, I would probably agree with you but he's more of a 65-75 point player, and his defense doesn't close the gap in 40+ points between him and McDavid.

Also it's also important to determine what statistics are being used to determine actual defensive impact.

I agree with your comment almost entirely, but the problem is that he more than well makes up for those 40 points. Not only because Couturier is almost at the very top in league defensive ability, but because McDavid is at the bottom. If McDavid was even average defensively he'd be the best player in the league by far - but he's not close to that.

I get that because I'm pretty torn about players like Draisaitl and Kane because obviously their offense is elite but their defense isn't good