No one’s claiming Lowry is the Jets #1 centre. He doesn’t play the most minutes, or exclusively against top lines. Of course his QoC is going to be less than Kopitar’s. The Jets have their own top 6 who deserve ice time, they’re not going to leave Scheifele on the bench and give Lowry 22 minutes per game.
Even so, Lowry’s line (which usually includes Copp, and sometimes Armia) has often been used in a shutdown role against top lines, at least since the Flyers game in November when Maurice figured out how good they were at that. The Jets are so committed to line matching with Lowry at home that his line often gets the first shift of the game. On the road, opposition coaches seem to avoid Lowry’s line whenever possible, so they face mostly 3rd and 4th liners in that situation.
Lowry’s overall stats for QoC for the year would be higher if Maurice had put him in the shutdown role earlier than November, if opponents didn’t keep their top lines away from his when the Jets are on the road, and if Lowry hadn’t missed about half the games due to injury since his line got the shutdown role (while Lowry was out, Copp centred that line, and did OK but not as well).
That’s all just to address the QoC question. When you say:
...that’s true enough for his usage.
But Lowry’s results have been far better than a typical 3rd line centre. Here are SKATR charts comparing Lowry to the first 3 names on your list of “the middle of the 3rd line centres”: Bonino, Dubinsky and Henrique.
Anyone who cares enough about hockey stats to fire up Corsica and scroll through the QoC rankings should take one look at those charts and let out low whistle: Lowry is miles better than the rest of his competition here, especially defensively.
Here’s a more direct Leafs comparison, Bozak vs Lowry:
Again, Lowry dominates the comparison, especially defensively. Bozak is getting almost all offensive zone starts, and Lowry defensive zone starts, but Lowry produces almost as many shots for and way fewer shots against. Talk about tilting the ice. I’ll repeat myself: if the Leafs has a bottom 6 centre like Adam Lowry, we’d never hear the end of it.
And while he’s done that work against mostly bottom 6 opposition, Lowry’s been similarly successful against top lines whenever he’s had the chance, including Giroux in the Flyers game in November, or Bergeron last month.
Putting his performance in context — Lowry’s a bottom 6 centre — shouldn’t minimize his accomplishment — he’s been a shutdown beast this year. He’s one of the best CF% and xGF% players in the league, that’s not all because he’s playing against bottom 6 forwards.
There is zero evidence — none whatsoever — that Hyman or any of the Leafs is in Lowry’s league when it comes to playing effectively in a defensive role.
You can give Hyman some credit for the offensive success of Matthews line (most Leaf fans I’ve read here think he’s an anchor), but that line bleeds shots and scoring attempts against. Hyman works hard and forechecks effectively, but that isn’t translating into defensive success.
I don’t think Lowry would have any trouble crashing the boards and forechecking on Matthews wing, and he’d score a few more points just from puck retrieval. But I don’t think there’s any realistic chance that Hyman could play with Copp and Tanev and produce the kind of shot and scoring chance suppression Lowry has this year.
And since the poll is about “depth forwards”, not complementary forechecking 1st line wingers, Lowry is easily the better choice here.
