Why Their Defense Doesn’t Matter for Patrick Kane and Alex Ovechkin

December 31st, 2014 by Dave Lozo Leave a reply »

Let's for a moment look at the bodies of work for two anonymous players in the NHL.

(The headline is sort of a giveaway, but let's do this anyway.)

Player A plays on his off-side wing and is known entirely for his offense. In 552 career games, he has 196 goals and 533 points, about 0.97 points per game. No one should use plus/minus to judge a player, even though it happens, but for his career, he is plus-52. Only 22.2 percent of his faceoffs occur in the defensive zone, fourth-lowest among his team's forwards.

Player B plays on his offside wing and is known entirely for his offense. In 715 career games, he has 439 goals and 834 points, about 1.17 points per game. No one should use plus/minus to judge a player, even though it happens, but for his career, he is plus-54. About 27.5 percent of his faceoffs occur in the defensive zone, about middle of the pack for his team.

Neither player is part of the penalty-killing unit. 

Which NHL general manager wouldn't throw millions of dollars at these players to acquire their services?

Since this isn't very cleverly disguised, you've probably f ...

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