This year the NHL has seen an abundance of new trends emerge – a whole lot of upsets during these current playoffs (queue Montreal Canadiens, Philadelphia Flyers), the emergence of unheralded goalies (queue Michael Leighton and Jaroslav Halak), and most striking (at least in my mind), the emergence of elite goal scorers from the center position.
Traditionally, players at the center position, especially on the top two lines of a given team, were deemed to be playmakers that set up their wingers and thus wingers would pile up the stats in the goals column. If one were to look at the top goal scorers in the past twenty years, one will notice that only four centers during that span led the league in goal scoring – Mario Lemieux in 1996 with 69 goals, Vincent Lecavlier in 2007 with 52 goals, and Sidney Crosby and Steven Stamkos this season with 51 goals a piece. Aside from them, wingers dominate in the goal-scoring department.
Yet if we look back at the last 10 years, the most dominant goal scoring centers come from the Eastern Conference. Seven of the ten players that led all centers in goal scoring over the last decade are from the Eastern Conference, with only two cent ...
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Article written by Andrew Antinucci
Top 5 Goal Scoring Centers in the NHL Today
May 23rd, 2010 by Andrew Antinucci Leave a reply »
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