At least read the posts before you argue.
Ah I misread that phrase, thought he said IS not isn't.
At least read the posts before you argue.
With all due respect, I don't understand your post.
If you think there is only 15 #1D in the NHL today, and you would not modify that definition if there were 1,000,000 (as according to you league size is irrelevant to this determination) when substantially all of the defenseman in the league would not be NHL defenseman, then we simply don't agree.
A guy like Ceci would DEFINITELY be a #1D in this scenario: one of the better ones in the league in fact.
No, not yet. But if he stays on the right path, he will be very soon. He's top pairing, but not a number one. Has the potential to be a franchise defenseman.
It will be interesting to see how he performs without Campbell.
Nervous about the massive contract we handed out to him. Basically the same as Hedman, who is way more proven. And it brought 8 years of UFA for Hedman. While only 4 for Ekblad. The hope is that he becomes just as good or better than Hedman. But that is a bit of a risk considering the money we gave him.
Florida isnt lacking a #1 D, to answer the thread question.Teams lacking a #1D:
Edmonton
Vancouver
Dallas
Boston
Buffalo
Detroit
Florida
Toronto
Columbus
New Jersey
NY Islanders
Philadelphia
Are there 11 teams that have 2 #1 Dmen? Not to mention a bunch of teams with borderline ones like Anaheim, Carolina, Colorado which throw the math off even more.
To be fair, Hedman took a discount so he isn't a great comparison. Subban, Weber, Suter all got big money on contracts signed that took them through their UFA years. Hell, Ekblad's former partner Campbell had a massive contract when you consider it compared to the salary cap when he signed it. Ekblad's contract is almost the exact same as Doughty's was when he signed it, and when you consider the added UFA years in Ekblad's contract is in the ball park of other highly drafted d-men like Petriangelo.
I'm not saying you shouldn't be a bit worried about a player 2 years into his ELC getting 8 years 7M+ per. Almost any player getting that contract would make fans a bit nervous. But the contract is in the ball park of what other defenders of Ekblad's caliber have gotten off of their ELCs.
Are you sure you read it? The entire post is literally about how in general league size changes the definition based on the dispersal of talent, but that holding tight to the idea that the number of players cut out for certain roles must necessarily fit the specific number of teams is flawed.
I misread part of your post which threw me into a loop, my bad.
In that case, I will just re-emphasize that I feel you're threshold for what being a #1D is is too high. You're expectation is only allowing say 20, you can correct me with your exact number if you'd like, players be classified as such when there are 30 teams who are expected to be icing a player capable of being a #1D (assuming for the sake of the argument that each of the top 30 D were evenly distributed).
You're threshold of ability just doesn't make any sense to me.
I'm perfectly aware what the argument is. That post seemed to be slightly different.
You seem to be misunderstanding. The number of teams is a poor way to make a cutoff for the skill level of players, but it still impacts the the level of a quality needed to fill the role. Assuming a six team league at the current talent level, each team would be far better than current teams due to the concentration of talent. As such our definitions would have to change. The quality required to be a successful #1 D or #1 C becomes greater. Still, it's possible that a team would pay the 10th best center top line money, because there's likely not much difference between him and the 4th or 5th best guy. Say we make a list of the top 10 centers today:
Crosby
Malkin
Tavares
McDavid
Seguin
Giroux
Getzlaf
Kopitar
Toews
Thornton
That's 10 very good centers and obviously you can argue the order or add a guy like Backstrom or Stamkos. But that just speaks to the amount of talent in the league. How much difference is there really between Thornton and Getzlaf? Or Kopitar and Giroux? All these guys would be perfectly capable of playing and excelling on the top line in a six team league.
Now consider this: A new competing league of 6 teams similar to the former WHA breaks out with a fair number of NHLers leaving for it. All of the top forwards leave, but only a limited number of defensemen. Karlsson, Keith, Doughty, Hedman and Subban all bolt, along with a second group of Leddy, Klefbom, Tanev, Fowler, Larsson, Niskanen, and Hamonic. The rest of the defensemen are made up of minor leaguers. How many #1 defensemen are in the league? In a league where all the best forwards are condensed on 6 teams, would you trust Niskanen or Fowler or Leddy to succeed in that role when there's other teams putting out Keith or Doughty? I wouldn't. And I'd say in this league, based on the talent distribution, and number of teams, there's 5 guys you'd be comfortable with as your #1, and 7 guys you'd be comfortable with as your #2. If you don't have one playing in that role, you're SOL, and more than likely not winning anything.
Obviously that's an extreme example, but it shows just how ridiculous it is to try to put talent levels into a predetermined box based solely on the number of teams. League size isn't irrelevant to the situation, but because it's not based specifically on the talent at hand, an even distribution of players still doesn't mean every team has a player capable of adequately playing in the role their assigned.
You keep mischaracterizing my point. Leddy would be a #1 in that theoretical; he just wouldn't be a good enough one. I've said that like 5 times and you guys keep cherry-picking. We can say not all #1 Defensemen are good enough to lead their team to a cup. That's fine. I'm totally down with it. But there are 30 #1s, and in a 6 team league there are 6. It doesn't mean the team with D-man 29 and 30 (or 6 in your example) are content with them.
The top 10-15 (or whatever we deem to be good enough to win the cup) are the better #1s, but there are 30 #1s.
Here... help me out. Give me the rough breakdown of #1-6 in the league in your eyes if not 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, and 30. I saw someone said 40 #2s. You buy that? And if so what do you think is the rough breakdown of the other 4 types (#3-6)? 180 total defensemen (lets ignore 7th guys that are healthy scratches). Give me some rough numbers to work with and I'll prove how looking at it this way is nonsense.
You keep mischaracterizing my point. Leddy would be a #1 in that theoretical; he just wouldn't be a good enough one. I've said that like 5 times and you guys keep cherry-picking. We can say not all #1 Defensemen are good enough to lead their team to a cup. That's fine. I'm totally down with it. But there are 30 #1s, and in a 6 team league there are 6. It doesn't mean the team with D-man 29 and 30 (or 6 in your example) are content with them.
The top 10-15 (or whatever we deem to be good enough to win the cup) are the better #1s, but there are 30 #1s.
Here... help me out. Give me the rough breakdown of #1-6 in the league in your eyes if not 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, and 30. I saw someone said 40 #2s. You buy that? And if so what do you think is the rough breakdown of the other 4 types (#3-6)? 180 total defensemen (lets ignore 7th guys that are healthy scratches). Give me some rough numbers to work with and I'll prove how looking at it this way is nonsense.
No, not yet.
Ekblad's potential is sky high but regarding actual on ice play so far Ekblad is the most overrated young defenseman after Ristolainen.
You are looking at it like a flat even distribution. Whereas others are basing it of ability to do the job. Going by the second definition of course the further down you go, the more people there are who are qualified exist.
Look at the stucture of some random company. There are Few people who have the smarts and qualifications for CEO. Slightly more but still fee could run a Manager spot. An increasing amount can perform in a Lead role and then there are more than spots available who can perform in an Entry level.
People who see it in the sense of there being less than 30 1D. See it in the sense that the 1D can only be properly filled by a select few but the structure of the organization demands for 30 of them.
Kinda like if a company demanded to have 30 CEOs but since that rile is so hard to fill there are alot of managers who are taking on extended roles and not performing as well as those who are actually CEOs
So what's the point of using an even distribution over the number of teams if the whole point is just to say "30 teams, 30 jobs". It makes it seem like all it does is try to eliminate the flaw of some teams having two great players at the same position and sweep it under the rug to make the arumen look better. If a player cannot adequately perform the job he's tasked with why are we making concessions to say that he's "a number 1, just not a very good one"? What the hell is the point in that? It's completely meaningless
No... us arbitrarily deciding a cut-off is the meaningless thing here. I'm saying there are 30 #1s, and not all #1s are equal, and people have explained for pages why.
If its not based on league size, then we go back to the whole paradigm where there could be ten #1 centers in a 6 team league...
Uh, no, no they haven't. Just repeating there's 30 teams, so there must be 30 number 1s is not explaining why. That's literally the "proof" that keeps being brought up, and it's absolutely hilarious to see people try to make the argument sound more thorough than that. Again, I get it. Using 30 teams creates a nice objective way of determining players. But if you're just going to call them good or bad #1s, it's all just bull **** semantics.
Ekblad is more overrated than Risto
No we have explained. If there are 6 teams, we can't have 8 #1 centers. No one seems to dispute that. And similarly, if we suddenly have 40 teams, we can't just suddenly have 60 more #6 defensemen... unless you're saying each team would suddenly, on average, be running around with 2-3 #6 D playing full-time. You guys just keep ignoring the logical fallacy.
I'm honestly trying really hard to not drop the whole, "I have a degree in Mathematics and anyone worth their salt in population distribution knows that its done on a sliding scale" line here.
No we have explained. If there are 6 teams, we can't have 8 #1 centers. No one seems to dispute that. And similarly, if we suddenly have 40 teams, we can't just suddenly have 60 more #6 defensemen... unless you're saying each team would suddenly, on average, be running around with 2-3 #6 D playing full-time. You guys just keep ignoring the logical fallacy.
I'm honestly trying really hard to not drop the whole, "I have a degree in Mathematics and anyone worth their salt in population distribution knows that its done on a sliding scale" line here.
And you're deliberately ignoring context. Yes - there are 30 defensemen who log the most minutes for their teams as defensemen. And no, you cannot get an objective list of the 30 best defensemen in the league.
So what? That's really where you're going to end it? This is a hockey message board for discussions. WHOAAAAAA.
This is the point where I end having your post feed show up on my screen because my degree jumped off the wall and told me to.
For the others:
I understand what you people are thinking and it's just horrific. Yes - in fairy land you can make really balanced teams if you distributed talent equally. But lets place players 1-30 for F, D and G on the same teams and see how much Team #30 has in common with Team #1. Suddenly the #2 D on Team #1 is greatly outplaying the #1 on Team #30 and your list of "best defensemen" changes. It's pointless, garbage hypothetical not based in fact, math or any logic.
It's a commonly accepted definition. Let's shoot over to ESPN talking about fantasy football for simple terms.
http://www.espn.com/fantasy/footbal...ezekiel-elliott-rb1-fantasy-football-2016-nfl
"An RB1"
Do you know what that means? If you have 12 teams in the league it means a top 12 RB. If you have 10, a top 10.
It's a simple, very widely used and understood, concept.