Is Aaron Ekblad a #1 D-man?

[Sureves]

At least read the posts before you argue.

Ah I misread that phrase, thought he said IS not isn't.

 

[Regal]

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.

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.

 

[danielpalfredsson]

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.

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.

 

[CHGoalie27]

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.

Florida isnt lacking a #1 D, to answer the thread question.
Shayne Gostisbehere takes Philly away too, unless Philly fans comvince me that he is that defensively horrific (not from what Ive seen)

 

[The Jesus*]

Honestly haven't seen enough of him to have an opinion. In my mind I'm picturing a young Weber. But people say he plays more like a physical Pietrangelo. Is Ekblad an elite puck mover? I just don't picture him as that. But again, I just haven't seen enough of him to have a real opinion.

 

[Aladyyn]

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.

Ekblad is not as good as Doughty was when he signed his contract though.

 

[Sureves]

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.

 

[Regal]

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.

To me, if you're going to build a team with the goal of winning the cup, in general you need players capable of playing the top roles without giving up much to other teams. A deep defense can mask lack of upper talent to a certain degree, I think you end up getting to a level of defenseman that you're not capable of winning the cup with as your best defenseman under a reasonable cap expenditure for the rest of your roster. And at that point I think your GM would be looking for an upgrade.

Now, obviously every team would love upgrades everywhere, but if you're Ottawa and can put Karlsson out there half the game, you're not worried about finding another top defenseman, you just need to fill in the right pieces around him. And you can just get a sense of where everyone fits to make a good team. He's a #1. And an elite one obviously. Methot is probably ideally on your second pairing but he's good enough to play with an elite defenseman like Karlsson on the first. I'd call him a #3. Phaneuf is good enough to play on a top pairing with a similar or better quality player or be the best defenseman on the second pair, where he plays in Ottawa. I'd call him a #2. Ceci has potential but is young and a bit inconsistent. He struggles to carry his own pairing but can play well with a veteran presence who's better than him like Phaneuf. I'd call him a #4. I don't really have a number off hand of how many #1 defensemen there are without really thinking about a list, but I tend to do a similar breakdown when I consider players and where they best fit. I realize it's a totally subjective exercise and it's difficult to turn it into a wholly objective endeavor when debating with people, which is why I understand wanting to use the strict top 30 rule. But it's just how I would view players when building a team.

 

[vendetta]

Saying NUMBER1D puts a specific number on it tho since every team has to ice a1d... so that wpukd make it a top30... otherwise u can use the term elite d then it can fluctuate from person to person as to how many elite d men there are... it's the same as saying starting qb for football... that automatically makes it a top 32 instead of elite or good starting qb which woukd make the number change from person to person...

 

[Le Magnifique 66]

He is not far from it now and he will definitely be one in the near future

 

[ScaredStreit]

It would be tough to name 30 better than him...he's definitely top pairing guy though.

 

[dbhislife]

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.

 

[WhatWhat]

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 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

 

[Regal]

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.

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

 

[JFG]

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.

 

[Aladyyn]

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.

Ekblad is more overrated than Risto

 

[dbhislife]

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

I get all of that. Just humor me; what do you think is roughly the breakdown of the 180 current defensemen? 15, 20, 30, 30, 40, 45?

Because using something like that (a non-linear breakdown) implies that the 6 new D-men who get jobs next year (when we have 186 in the NHL full-time we'll need 6 more defensemen to be given full-time jobs somewhere in the league) are obviously also #6s, so the new breakdown is 15, 20, 30, 30, 40, 51. And that implies that, as another poster has said, if we added 10 teams, or 100 teams, you're logic is the breakdown would be 15, 20, 30, 30, 40, 115 or some crazy number. That's just not how it works. The scale slides as the league becomes more or less concentrated. Otherwise teams on average would have like three #6 defensemen on their team in a 40 team league.

 

[dbhislife]

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....

 

[Regal]

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.

 

[dbhislife]

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.

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.

 

[JFG]

Ekblad is more overrated than Risto

Yeah, you're probably right.

 

[FlaPanthers11]

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.

It's baffling that people are trying to argue against this.

 

[Knave]

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.

 

[FlaPanthers11]

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.

 

[Knave]

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.

LOL, comparing football to hockey. And before I get tears of "you're a hockey elitist" - no, I watch football too.