Nope.
He's a decent to good 3rd line winger.
The issue with Compher at C is that he's not a good possession driver. He's a very direct north-south player, which can be useful but also has limitations.
What the numbers bear out is that he was good defensively this season, with -14% xGA/60 being near elite level (for comparison Bergeron is a -16%). I think a portion of that can be attributed to linemates (eg. Nichuskin) though.
His PK metrics are also extremely poor at +26%.
On offense he generated 13% less chances than league average which is quite poor as well. However, he still managed to put up 39 point pace (39 points in 82 games including playoffs).
The xGF/60 and point totals suggest that he's outproducing his expected goals for, something which is also illustrated by his high PDO:
Another thing I find noteworthy is that a lot of players seem to do better without him than with him, suggesting that he isn't a "glue" guy on his line, but rather a more individualistic player. This is something that is supported by the eye-test, and statistically speaking is an underlying reason why most Avs fans believe that he's miscast as a center.
This isn't to say that he's a bad player. He's a responsible guy in all zones who Bednar clearly trusts to deploy in all situations as illustrated in the chart below.
Further to that, the bottom line is that his impact on the box score is really good for a 3rd liner playing 72% of his TOI against elite opposition. Especially when one considers that he's in the 22nd percentile for OZ starts.
Compher has scored at a ~0.5ppg rate consistently since the 2017-18 playoffs, and even continued that when being miscast as a center (albeit with a high PDO). He's solid defensively, but doesn't drive possession well.
The desire from Avs fans to "upgrade" 3C has less to do with Compher's ability and more to do with his skillset being miscast. Simply replacing Compher with a more of a possession driving 3C would make sense, however given that we have Newhook and Bowers in the pipeline it doesn't really make sense to go out all-guns blazing to get a 3C at any price.
Moving him back to RW would be ideal as it would suit his skillset better, but given the logjam at RW (Saad/Donskoi/Kaut/etc) it's clear that he'll continue to be an adequate C in the short term until such time that we either pick up a 3C at the deadline or simply wait for Newhook to join.
