Quoting: IconicHawk
If you asked me who were the top 5 centers in the league here’s how I rank them:
1. McDavid
2. Mackinnion
3. Draisital (however you spell his name)
4. Matthews
5. Point (it’s really up for grabs I don’t care who you think it is as long as it makes sense)
I agree here mostly, but I do sincerely believe that matthews could be number 2, but granted, he didn’t show up in the playoffs. This wrist surgery could’ve been the reason he dropped off in production in the latter half of the season and the playoffs...
Either way both players have failed to help their teams have any major playoff success.
In my opinion, sincerely and unbiased, I think matthews is better than Drai, my reasons being
1. GOALS
Matthews and Draisaitl have the same number of career goals, though Matthews has played in almost 150 less games. Even attributing to the fact that matthews has an elite playmaker on his side, that’s a very wide gap.
2. Defensive Ability
I don’t use analytics a lot (I really never look at them), but based on my own eyes these two players have very similar defensive ability, If not drai has the edge. However, matthews has been getting better and better every year defensively and Drai seems to have hit his defensive “ceiling”. If matthews doesn’t improve this year defensively, the drai reigns superior in this category.
3. Game Changing Ability
I know there is no statistics to measure here, but this is all based on how a single player can change the game. You can see and notice when matthews is on the ice, (this playoffs with his wrist injury aside), because the other players seem to respect his skill. When he gets momentum matthews can change the flow of the game, something very few players can do, guy like mcdavid do the same. Draisaitl really doesn’t have as much of a wow factor as matthews when he’s on the ice. He’s a lot more subtle and doesn’t really determine the game flow. However this is all interpretation and you could interpret this very differently than me
That said, there is my reason for matthews > drai. Matthews hasn’t hit his ceiling yet, whereas it seems that Draisaitl won’t get much better than this……