TomasHertlsRooster
Don’t say eye test when you mean points
Honestly the more I look at all of the deepest metrics, the more I feel that Karlsson's entire career was kinda overrated.
Erik Karlsson (Part 6)
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Honestly the more I look at all of the deepest metrics, the more I feel that Karlsson's entire career was kinda overrated.
tiburon12
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- Jul 18, 2009
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But not when you also factor in how he played. His physical gifts were in a class of their own in the early 2010s
hohosaregood
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I feel like a lot of sens players are pretty overrated. There's a special type of hype train that comes out of Ottawa for some reason. I do think he is a special player with an amazing package of skills and work ethic. And he's had excellent individual results because of his talent and work ethic but he never seems amazing on a team if that makes sense. Like if Jumbo can be excellent and elevate a team, Karlsson can be excellent independent of the team.
Agent Zub
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- Jan 2, 2015
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you can argue his true peak ended when he was only 22. Ottawa had a lot of HoFers like Chara, Hossa, Alfredsson and even 100 point guys like Spezza and Heatley. A 22 year old Karlsson was easily better than all of these players. He looked like the kind of player that your team might get once in your lifetime. This might sound like more overrating of him but I'll stand by it lol
It's crazy how many peaks and valleys he's already had in his career. Hopefully he has a more Lidstrom like 2nd half of his career. I truly think he has the natural ability.
jarr92
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- May 7, 2013
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Timos Death Stare
Seek and Destroy
I reference this article a lot when debating Erik Karlsson. https://jfresh.substack.com/p/is-erik-karlsson-still-elite
jarr92
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- May 7, 2013
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I still believe he can get back to his level of play during the 2018-2019 season, when he was the best player in the league for awhile. Certainly had a tough first game though.
Karlsson was atrocious last night.
Corsi for % - 40%
Scoring Chance Percentage - 28.6%
Expected Goals For Percentage - 33.3%
Giveaways - 3
Takeaways - 0
Statistically, he was way worse than Meloche last night. He was by far the worst defenseman.
Corsi for % - 40%
Scoring Chance Percentage - 28.6%
Expected Goals For Percentage - 33.3%
Giveaways - 3
Takeaways - 0
Statistically, he was way worse than Meloche last night. He was by far the worst defenseman.
Pavelski2112
Bold as Boognish
Not to say we shouldn't be worried, but haven't we gone through this both other years he's been on the team?
It's been said almost ad nauseum, but EK is a notoriously slow starter.
It's been said almost ad nauseum, but EK is a notoriously slow starter.
This is my opinion only from watching Karlsson over the years, but I feel like he was able to do so much just from his natural talent and now after all these injuries he just looks lost because he hasn’t worked super hard because he’s used to just being better than everyone naturally. I could be way off but he looks frustrated by his own lack of capability right now.
Fistfullofbeer
Moderator
Not making excused for Karlsson but other than being a slow starter I wonder if part of the problem is that he is trying to do too much to justify his salary. I am not going to make a lot of last game simply because it was the first game of the season after a big gap since his previous game. But goes without saying that he needs to get better significantly.
Honestly, that EK65 didn't look terribly different from the one last night: a lot of lazy-looking positioning (but with great recoveries).
Last night, his timing looked off and maybe the conditioning too. But, his movements didn't seem tender, so maybe he's at least past the injuries.Hopefully, more game time and pre-faceoff stick twirling will do the trick . . .
The slow starter excuse I can buy for his poor decision making, bad passes, and overall defensive lapses, and I'm willing to cut him a break there. What concerns me the most is his skating ability. His stride looks brutal, he can't generate speed worth anything and this was incredibly noticeable in OT with all the open ice, he just didn't stand out. He also completely gave up on that 2-0 and Jones saved his ass.
Karlsson last night wasn't any different from what I saw from every early Karlsson struggle that I've seen here. He's notoriously a slow starter which can certainly pose a problem in a shortened season. And if he's played like last night on the regular, I expect him to get injured again.
Negatively Positive
Mr. Longevity
- Mar 2, 2011
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If it's true that Karlsson doesn't put in much work in the off-season and that's why he has notorious slow starts then I think that needs to change. It's harder to recover and get in shape as you get older so if Karlsson wants to be somewhat worth his contract then he needs to put in the work. The Sharks can't afford for him to take 20 games to get going especially in a shortened season like this.
Slow starters also tend to have effort issues with them. Karlsson's no different just because he's an elite talent. Even skating strides are going to be affected by a lack of competitive play or just overall effort level being low. I think his effort level was poor and then near the end he was gassed. All things that make sense given the circumstances. All things I expect him to improve over time. All thing I expect people here to tear him to shreds over because of his contract and rightfully so.
Karlsson will get better but Boughner needs to reel in his usage to preserve him.
Yeah the usage was brutal last night. Karlsson 32 minutes, burns 27 minutes, vlasic 26 minutes, ferraro 21 minutes, meloche 5 minutes, the one with the k in the name 10 minutes.
He played the top 4 into the ground in game 1 of a 56 game season that has lots of back to backs and short turn arounds between games.
If this continues expect those 4 to be crawling on the ice by game 20.
OrrNumber4
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- Jul 25, 2002
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It's possible that the high usage was to precisely to get the players back in game shape/mentality.
With Meloche, he made that one atrocious play up the middle, and that was that. I can believe that he was the #7 guy just looking at camp, but Middleton (and arguably Pasnichuk) have a better track record. I'm sure that thought was what caused such a peremptory benching.
Correct and we just fell for it because we pretty much never saw Ottawa play. It was a slightly red (pale pink maybe) flag from the very beginning in that Ottawa, the org than knew him the best, was willing to let him go for a bag of pucks. Still, it seemed like miraculous good luck when it happened and it was definitely a good move. But a dozen games into the season, that flag was flashing bright red. It is inconceivable that Wilson wanted to sign him at all after that season but to 8 years and $100,000,000??? There was a non-zero probability that Karlsson might suddenly turn back into the player he had been reputed to be but it wasn't very large and even if it had been better than 50:50, it could not conceivably justified the cost/risk/benefit of signing him.
Lets hope it was just a throw into the deep end to burn rust off, because that kind of usage will not bode well for a short season.
OrrNumber4
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- Jul 25, 2002
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Have to say, this is rewriting history!
Ottawa was willing to let him go because he wasn't going to sign there. Simple as that...no need to invent reasons. There might have been a light pink flag 20 games in, but 60 games into the season and it looked like Karlsson was the best defenseman in the league. Everyone (at least here) wanted him to be resigned. People knew there were injury risks going forward; there were worries about Karlsson fitting into the system and how he'd age, but what you're ignoring is the calculation is keeping Karlsson or basically doing nothing. With Karlsson, the Sharks had (and may still have) a decent chance at having a top-5 player in the game on their roster. Without Karlsson, they had practically no chance.
However, is fair to say that even in his prime, Karlsson was prone to slumps, especially defensively. It is, in my view, not dissimilar to how people rave about McDavid, Mackinnon, and Matthews while kind of forgetting what a disaster they are defensively (Mackinnon less so). Going forwards, we have to come to grips with Karlsson giving with two hands and taking with one.
Well for a fan of the truly sublime Orr to see anything good in Karlsson is surprising but as for "rewriting history" this is the same opinion I've been writing since the end of the first season (and of course being insulted no end by the board people here). Discounting the injury time in assessing his performance (which IS nevertheless a factor in his value to the team) I never saw a particularly valuable player when watching Karlsson on the ice. Occasionally he would make a pretty play but for the most part, his "offense, " i.e., points accumulated was a perfunctory correlate of his toi and his defense was really, really bad. I would not describe that as the "best defenseman in the league." When that phrase got tossed around it was mostly people seeing what they wanted to see on a night when he hadn't fallen on his face and embarrassed himself. And the whole league has in their book on him that it is not hard to skate around him and if you pressure him, he folds like wet crepe paper.
Ottawa was not looking at cap constraints. If Karlsson really was as good as everyone said at the time, he was the cornerstone of the team and you eat the shyte, bow to the blackmail, and re-sign him. They did not think he was worth hanging on to. Given that Wilson did get to see a full season of an unreliable and probably overrated player he should have known better than to sign him to the next contract but he did it anyway. And the team is MUCH worse because of it, both because Karlsson isn't doing his part and because they are limited in who they can hire to become a better team.
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