Montreal's P.K. Subban and Andrei Markov combined for 49 power-play points last year. That's incredible! While they are clearly the best power-play pairing, individually, neither is the league's best defenseman. Who is?
To answer that question in a manner that's free of personal bias, we're using hockey analytics. All NHL defensemen were ranked by their average power-play scoring rate over the past three seasons through this past weekend's games.
Only those who managed at least 300 minutes of power-play time were considered, which means that players like Torey Krug and Andy Greene were not considered.
Based on reputation, Zdeno Chara and Drew Doughty were the list's most prominent absences, but the closest near misses were actually Niklas Kronwall, Ryan Suter, Kimmo Timonen and Kris Letang.
While many of the players in the top 10 come as no surprise, it was quite a shock to see who finished on top. Turn over to start with No. 10, and see if you can guess who came in at No. 1 by the time you get there.
Raw data from NHL.com, all sums and averages are via writer's own original research ...
Read Full Article at Bleacher Report - NHL
Article written by Rob Vollman
Ranking the 10 Best NHL Defensemen on the Power Play
December 24th, 2013 by Rob Vollman Leave a reply »
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