Rank These Centers Defensively

GMR

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Jul 27, 2013
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My list is in no particular order. We're rating these centers on defensive abilities only. Either in their own zone or neutral zone.


Oates
Lindros
Thornton
Messier
H. Sedin
Roenick
Damphousse
Sundin
Modano
Crosby
Turgeon
Nieuwendyk
 
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Michael Farkas

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Jun 28, 2006
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Boy, it's tough because there's some real caveats to this...

Like, regular season Crosby for the first 8, 9, 10 years really isn't anything of note...but playoff Crosby is excellent and the last couple regular seasons have been really good. Prime Thornton: meh. But like Team Canada Thornton is really damn good. Late Messier was nothing, etc. This is a tough list...
 

GMR

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Jul 27, 2013
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Boy, it's tough because there's some real caveats to this...

Like, regular season Crosby for the first 8, 9, 10 years really isn't anything of note...but playoff Crosby is excellent and the last couple regular seasons have been really good. Prime Thornton: meh. But like Team Canada Thornton is really damn good. Late Messier was nothing, etc. This is a tough list...
That was by design. I tried thinking of elite centers whose defensive game is not discussed much. So I didn't put any easy ones in here like Carbonneau or Bergeron.

That said, many of these players received Selke votes. My guess is that Modano and Oates probably have the most high Selke finished on this list. Others barely sniffed any votes from memory.
 

TheDevilMadeMe

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Aug 28, 2006
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My list is in no particular order. We're rating these centers on defensive zone play only.


Oates
Lindros
Thornton
Messier
H. Sedin
Damphousse
Sundin
Modano
Crosby
Turgeon
Nieuwendyk

Borderline elite: Modano
Good: Oates, Thornton, Damphousse, Crosby
Responsible: Lindros, Messier*, Nieuwendyk
Mediocre: H Sedin, Sundin
Bad: Turgeon

*Messier is hard to rank, because he was probably good in the playoffs, but mediocre in much of the regular season.
 

Trap Jesus

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Feb 13, 2012
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There's more to D than just D-zone play. You including neutral zone and forechecking and whatnot, or just play without the puck in the D-zone?
 

GMR

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There's more to D than just D-zone play. You including neutral zone and forechecking and whatnot, or just play without the puck in the D-zone?
I agree. I'll change the OP a little to clarify that. Not sure about forechecking. We'll just say defensive and neutral zone play.
 

GMR

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Borderline elite: Modano
Good: Oates, Thornton, Damphousse, Crosby
Responsible: Lindros, Messier*, Nieuwendyk
Mediocre: H Sedin, Sundin
Bad: Turgeon

*Messier is hard to rank, because he was probably good in the playoffs, but mediocre in much of the regular season.
Henrik Sedin is an interesting case. He played in an era where two-way play is expected of centers. Despite that, he never stood out with his defensive play.
 

quoipourquoi

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Jan 26, 2009
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Boy, it's tough because there's some real caveats to this...

Like, regular season Crosby for the first 8, 9, 10 years really isn't anything of note...but playoff Crosby is excellent and the last couple regular seasons have been really good. Prime Thornton: meh. But like Team Canada Thornton is really damn good. Late Messier was nothing, etc. This is a tough list...

Definitely a difference in perception that can be created by ability versus utilization. Modano had the most responsibilities 5-on-5 because of the team philosophy in Dallas, but he wouldn’t necessarily be my top pick to center a penalty kill.
 

vadim sharifijanov

Registered User
Oct 10, 2007
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Borderline elite: Modano
Good: Oates, Thornton, Damphousse, Crosby
Responsible: Lindros, Messier*, Nieuwendyk
Mediocre: H Sedin, Sundin
Bad: Turgeon

*Messier is hard to rank, because he was probably good in the playoffs, but mediocre in much of the regular season.

i wonder if we could change that to

borderline elite: modano
very good: damphousse
good:
above average: these two levels would contain some distribution of oates, thornton in the last half decade or so, crosby, lindros, messier, nieuwendyk
not a liability: sundin, sedin
turgeon: turgeon
 

Nick Hansen

Registered User
Sep 28, 2017
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All I know is that Modano is at the top, he was forced to be by his coach and he took on that responsibility and grew to be a very fine two-way center. Also was an excellent skater which I think is important for this.

H. Sedin should be somewhere at the bottom, don't really remember him ever being much of note defensively... I certainly wouldn't have him above Thornton or Sundin. The latter atleast was great when it came to faceoffs.
 
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Yozhik v tumane

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Jan 2, 2019
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I wonder what exactly there is to Sundin being ranked so lowly by some? From my recollections, mostly having seen him on Team Sweden, he was definitely a reassuring presence on the ice in most situations, including high pressure defensive ones. I also wonder if players like Sedin and Thornton are benefiting in people’s minds from having adapted their game in more recent memory?

I also recognize that there is some obvious difficulty and loads of subjectivity in ranking awesome offensive/possession players within these boundaries.
 

decma

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Feb 6, 2013
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Starting with career goals allowed (exc PPGA) per 80 games.

Sedin 45
Nieuwendyk 51
Thornton 53
Modano 53
Turgeon 56
Lindros 60
Damphousse 61
Sundin 63
Crosby 66
Messier 68
Oates 71

Obviously this is unfair to Messier as he played such a significant chunk of his career in a high-scoring era relative to the others (especially Crosby and Sedin).

So limiting it to the 12 seasons when nine of the 11 played a significant part of their careers and were established as first liners (1993 to 2004):

Nieuwendyk 48
Modano 54
Turgeon 54
Damphousse 55
Thornton 59
Sundin 62
Messier 62
Lindros 62
Oates 68

Ice time and quality of goalies and other teammates likely explain part of this, but I think the data create at least a preliminary case that Oates was not that good defensively, and that Nieuwendyk, Modano, Turgeon, and Damphousse were.
 
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Hockey Outsider

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Jan 16, 2005
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Starting with career goals allowed (exc PPGA) per 80 games.

Sedin 45
Nieuwendyk 51
Thornton 53
Modano 53
Turgeon 56
Lindros 60
Damphousse 61
Sundin 63
Crosby 66
Messier 68
Oates 71

Obviously this is unfair to Messier as he played such a significant chunk of his career in a high-scoring era relative to the others (especially Crosby and Sedin).

So limiting it to the 12 seasons when nine of the 11 played a significant part of their careers and were established as first liners (1993 to 2004):

Nieuwendyk 48
Modano 54
Turgeon 54
Damphousse 55
Thornton 59
Sundin 62
Messier 62
Lindros 62
Oates 68

Ice time and quality of goalies and other teammates likely explain part of this, but I think the data create at least a preliminary case that Oates was not that good defensively, and that Nieuwendyk, Modano, Turgeon, and Damphousse were.

I think there's some value in the goals against data, but there's a fair amount of context that needs to be considered.

Let's look at Modano and Turgeon. They might be the best and worst defensive player on this list, respectively. But they're on the ice for the same number of goals against per game. Let's see if we can figure out why.

Let's look at 1998 to 2004. Those are the first years we have actual ice time data. Modano was on the ice for 281 ES goals against, Turgeon 232. Modano played 520 games, Turgeon 465. So that's 43 ES GA per 80 games for Modano, and 40 for Turgeon. (It's a bit lower than your list since you went back to 1993 - the higher scoring years are excluded).

So that suggests they're in the same ballpark, with Turgeon somewhat ahead - right? Not really. We know from the official NHL icetime stats that Modano played 11,175 ES min, Turgeon played 8,071 minutes. So their personal GAA's were 1.51 for Modano, and 1.72 for Turgeon. So Modano's GAA is about 14% lower, and we haven't even talked about matchups yet. And suggesting that Turgeon's defensive responsibilities were anywhere close to Turgeon's is obviously wrong. (Not that there's a perfect correlation between PK duties and defensive duties at ES, but it's worth noting that Turgeon played 9 seconds per game on the PK during this period; Modano played 2:28 per game, nearly as much as players like Lehtinen, Maltby, Draper, etc).

The response may be this covers most of Modano's prime, and Turgeon was past his prime at this point. They're nearly the same age, but Modano clearly peaked later. But this still features Turgeon's only two seasons in the top five in points per game, so it's not like he was washed up during this entire period. Besides, there's no evidence that Turgeon was good defensively during his earlier offensive prime (in 1993 he was on the ice for 84 ES goals against - tied for 4th worst among forwards that year, on a team that was league average in terms of goals against).

The observation I made when we had this discussion last year is Turgeon's GA numbers are dragged down by his 2000 season, when he was on the ice for 19 ES goals in 759 minutes. Either we can conclude that Turgeon suddenly became a Clarke/Datsyuk calibre defensive forward for one year only, and nobody noticed - or maybe he was the beneficiary of playing heavy ice time with Chris Pronger at his absolute peak.
 

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