Are McDavid, Drai, MacKinnon, Panarin, & Kucherov the undisputed top-5 players in today's league?

[majormajor]

I just find these defensive metrics for forwards to be so hard to actually quantify watching the game. I think it’s one of the few categories where the advanced stats mean almost nothing. I cannot spot a player with good metrics compared to one with bad defensive metrics by watching them play. I can spot the opposite for offensive metrics.

That’s why I really don’t care very much about defensive metrics for forwards. If someone tells me that McDavid is bad defensively and MacKinnon is good, the first thing I’m going to do is go to the PK TOI and FO% stats. When I want to judge a center’s defense based on stats, I want to know how their team relies on them. Do they play PK and do they win their draws? Neither does.

All of the metrics we've been discussing can be misleading without context but I would say PK TOI and FO% are perhaps the most misleading.

PK TOI is just a usage stat and that depends on coaching philosophy. Some coaches (like Hitchcock) love to use their best players on the PK, other coaches won't use them there even if they are the best PKers. The marginal value that one PKer provides over another is usually pretty small so I happen to think it is a waste of TOI to play an offensive superstar on the PK, it just means scoring shifts that are being taken away. And McDavid and Draisaitl were both visibly exhausted by their minutes last year, so we should understand their energy as a scarce resource that should only be devoted where the marginal differences between players are highest (PP, 5v5).

FO% is obviously all about possession, so we should have a good understanding of how important FO% is to maintaining possession, which we can measure. And it turns out that differences between 45-55% on the FO% (where vast majority of centers fit) have barely any discernable effect on possession. It's just one of many puck battles and possession changes that happen per shift and it doesn't add up to much difference if the percentages are close. 43% would make a difference, but could easily be swamped by other things effecting possession (does the player make good passes, win battles in corners, backcheck well, etc...). In all cases it would make more sense to just look at the overall possession stats (CF%, xGF%, absolute and relative) with as much context as you can.

 

[Jarey Curry]

Panarin doesn’t belong if anything it should be Kane there if we are going off the last two years.

Kucherov has played years in the same system with familiar guys. Panarin works his magic and always delivers in an entirely new environment, just worth noticing

 

[Sidney the Kidney]

FO% is obviously all about possession, so we should have a good understanding of how important FO% is to maintaining possession, which we can measure. And it turns out that differences between 45-55% on the FO% (where vast majority of centers fit) have barely any discernable effect on possession. It's just one of many puck battles and possession changes that happen per shift and it doesn't add up to much difference if the percentages are close. 43% would make a difference, but could easily be swamped by other things effecting possession (does the player make good passes, win battles in corners, backcheck well, etc...). In all cases it would make more sense to just look at the overall possession stats (CF%, xGF%, absolute and relative) with as much context as you can.

I've always wondered if they split the faceoff percentages by zone, as one would assume it's more vital to win a draw in the offensive or defensive zone than it is in the neutral zone.

How many more scoring opportunities would a 55% faceoff man in the offensive zone result in for his team compared to one who only wins 45% of his offensive zone draws? How many more goals against are scored as a result of a player only winning 45% of his defensive zone draws compared to someone who wins 55% of his D-zone draws?

Just going by gut and not any sort of numerical evidence, but it would seem that being 10% better in the O-zone and D-zone would be important, while being 10% better in neutral zone draws won't amount to all that much.