Scott Stevens Underrated As An Offensive Defenseman?

DawnBTVS

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Jul 7, 2006
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Being born in 1985 and growing up watching the NHL in the 1990s, I largely remember Stevens more as a defensive presence making hits and being a key to the New Jersey Devils success within their Neutral Zone Trap system.

Yet in looking at his career, it's interesting just how steeply his numbers dropped once he became a team player and acclimated himself to the system. The numbers bear out his heavier defensive emphasis but prior to 1994 he was quite the offensive weapon.

1983-1994: 150 Goals, 522 Assists, and a +204 in 904 Games
1994-2003: 46 Goals, 190 Assists, and a +191 in 724 Games

He went from being a guy who'd generate 40-60 Assists and double digit goals (17, 12, and 18 from 1991-1993 alone) to a defenseman who would generate around 5 Goals and 20-25 Assists in any given season.

For anybody who watched Stevens in the 1980s or early 90s, how good was he offensively? Could he have legit challenged 325 Goals by his career's end or was he partly a product of the style of play in the 1980s and early 1990s?
 
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vadim sharifijanov

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Oct 10, 2007
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some stevens scoring perspective that might help: scott stevens led a team that came within a double overtime goal of being a stanley cup finalist in scoring. he finished a single point behind peak brian leetch that year (leetch would go on to win the conn smythe), and one point ahead of late prime coffey (who would win the norris a year later and imo should have also won the hart).

only 22 other defensemen have ever led their teams in scoring.
 

mrhockey193195

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Nov 14, 2006
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I'm even younger than @DawnBTVS so I am further removed from "high scoring" Stevens...but that kind of career trajectory has always intrigued me. We see it fairly often...with HOFers (Chelios, Robinson) and non-HOFers (Babych, Ellett, Carlyle).

The thing that makes it so interesting with Stevens - perhaps unlike all other similar defensemen - is that it happened so abruptly. From 93-94 to 94-95, he went from a team-leader in scoring to an offensive afterthought. And he was only 30 years old (and clearly had a LOT of hockey ahead of him), it's not like he was 36 or 37.

It MUST have been a conscious decision from Lemaire et. al., no?
 

Howie Hodge

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Sep 16, 2017
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Not underrated. He played two styles; basically as noted on this thread already.

Scott was asked about this, and here's how he explained the change in style and offensive output:

“It was hard work. I made more of a transition to a defensive shutdown guy. I had really decent offensive numbers, but for our first cup I was put in a different role. I guarded the other team’s top players. I accepted that role just as other players accepted new roles on the team.”

So there you have it.
 

Theokritos

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Apr 6, 2010
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I'm even younger than @DawnBTVS so I am further removed from "high scoring" Stevens...but that kind of career trajectory has always intrigued me. We see it fairly often...with HOFers (Chelios, Robinson) and non-HOFers (Babych, Ellett, Carlyle).

The thing that makes it so interesting with Stevens - perhaps unlike all other similar defensemen - is that it happened so abruptly. From 93-94 to 94-95, he went from a team-leader in scoring to an offensive afterthought. And he was only 30 years old (and clearly had a LOT of hockey ahead of him), it's not like he was 36 or 37.

It MUST have been a conscious decision from Lemaire et. al., no?

Some takes on the context:

Stevens' power play role all but disappeared. His penalty killing role went from "typical first-unit d-man" to "historically high". Even strength GF and GA dropped a bit, possibly because he was playing a more defensive style (ESP dropped). His overall plus-minus ratios rose along with his team.

He became more conservative, for sure, but not as dramatically as the statistics indicate.

1) his 78-point season was an outlier. The 4 seasons before that he averaged about 55 points/82 games.

2) like everyone else, he was affected by the 30% overall drop in league scoring between 1993 and 2000. Nobody was able to maintain their statistics through this period, and it isn't because they were getting worse or more conservative. The league just changed.

3) his PP time went way down. From a 1st-unit QB, to a 2nd unit guy, to not playing the PP at all really by 1997. His ES points are far more stable - went from 30-35 from 1988-93, up to 50 in 1993-94, then to 20-25 after that.

55 point Stevens - scoring change = 45 point Stevens - lack of PP time = 35 point Stevens, which isn't far off what he was actually producing.

Stevens' PP time all but disappeared in 1995, but he did score less at even strength too - his adjusted even strength scoring was more than 25% lower in the second half of his career from the first half. I think a lot of that had to do with usage, rather than a decline in skills though - Stevens went from being used in all situations to being hard-matched against the top lines of opponents and focusing on shutting them down.
 
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tony d

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Jun 23, 2007
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He may be known more for his defensive escapades in the late part of his career but there was a time he was a good offensive defenseman as well (5 60 pt. seasons).
 

BigBadBruins7708

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Dec 11, 2017
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some stevens scoring perspective that might help: scott stevens led a team that came within a double overtime goal of being a stanley cup finalist in scoring. he finished a single point behind peak brian leetch that year (leetch would go on to win the conn smythe), and one point ahead of late prime coffey (who would win the norris a year later and imo should have also won the hart).

only 22 other defensemen have ever led their teams in scoring.

fair enough, but that is also as much about the 94 Devils roster than it is Stevens.
 

vadim sharifijanov

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Oct 10, 2007
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fair enough, but that is also as much about the 94 Devils roster than it is Stevens.

the other part of my point is that was a legit good team, not the phoenix teams that yandle or ekman-larsson led in scoring. they fell one OT goal short of beating a team that only won the cup by a single goal.

and there is stevens, sandwiched btw conn smythe leetch and year-before-norris coffey in scoring, while playing on a defensive team with a new coach and system where recent 40 goal guys took a scoring haircut.
 
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TheDevilMadeMe

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Aug 28, 2006
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the other part of my point is that was a legit good team, not the phoenix teams that yandle or ekman-larsson led in scoring. they fell one OT goal short of beating a team that only won the cup by a single goal.

and there is stevens, sandwiched btw conn smythe leetch and year-before-norris coffey in scoring, while playing on a defensive team with a new coach and system where recent 40 goal guys took a scoring haircut.

To add:

1994 Devils weren't just the 2nd best team in the league by regular season points, they were also the 2nd highest scoring team in the league
 

Its a Trap

Yes I’m still here to piss you off
fair enough, but that is also as much about the 94 Devils roster than it is Stevens.
What exactly does it say? He had 78 points, and the next two players had over 70 points and 10 total players who scored over 40 points.

Basically the exact same team won the cup the next year. So what does that say exactly? That he was a tremendous scorer?
 

vadim sharifijanov

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Oct 10, 2007
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so i was thinking about this more: is there an argument that at least through the 90s stevens was the devils' best offensive defenseman? i.e., it wasn't niedermayer?

i'm guessing, in an alternative universe where he and the team don't go super lockdown defensive, he probably would have slowed down toward the end of the decade, and rafalski and nieds would still take over.

the reason i bring this up is it looks like in 1994 everything went through stevens, offensively. it was scoring by committee and maclean, lemieux, and richer all saw their scoring drop, as they shared the load with the young guys (guerin and holik), new soviet guys (semak and zelepukin), and randos (nicholls and corey millen). stevens led the team in ES assists and had more than double anyone else's PP assists.

obviously, scoring by committee worked and the team/lemaire would continue that into the cup year. but with basically the same guys up front sharing the load again, stevens was rededicated to defense and the team's offense went from 2nd to 13th, as dennis bonvie shows above, and then to 25th after that. that really shows how important '94 stevens was to that team's offense, and by extension how good he could be.

could stevens, under different circumstances, have kept putting up star-level points for the rest of the decade? i'm thinking, in the ozolinsh range?
 

TheDevilMadeMe

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Aug 28, 2006
52,271
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Brooklyn
so i was thinking about this more: is there an argument that at least through the 90s stevens was the devils' best offensive defenseman? i.e., it wasn't niedermayer?

i'm guessing, in an alternative universe where he and the team don't go super lockdown defensive, he probably would have slowed down toward the end of the decade, and rafalski and nieds would still take over.

the reason i bring this up is it looks like in 1994 everything went through stevens, offensively. it was scoring by committee and maclean, lemieux, and richer all saw their scoring drop, as they shared the load with the young guys (guerin and holik), new soviet guys (semak and zelepukin), and randos (nicholls and corey millen). stevens led the team in ES assists and had more than double anyone else's PP assists.

obviously, scoring by committee worked and the team/lemaire would continue that into the cup year. but with basically the same guys up front sharing the load again, stevens was rededicated to defense and the team's offense went from 2nd to 13th, as dennis bonvie shows above, and then to 25th after that. that really shows how important '94 stevens was to that team's offense, and by extension how good he could be.

could stevens, under different circumstances, have kept putting up star-level points for the rest of the decade? i'm thinking, in the ozolinsh range?

It's not out of the realm of possibility. Stevens' skating ability and hockey smarts didnt leave him after 1994; they were just redirected. His smarts and skating aren't talked about much, but they were major reasons he could be such an effective predator on the ice when looking for a big hit.

One thing about Stevens - before 1994, he was generally among the league leaders in even strength points, and he actually led all defensemen in even strength points in 1993-94. But he never put up as strong a performance on the PP, even back when he was used on the first unit. By compariosn, Bourque's perfomance on the PP is what won him the Norris in 1993-94 by a razor thin margin.
 
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vadim sharifijanov

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Oct 10, 2007
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It's not out of the realm of possibility. Stevens' skating ability and hockey smarts didnt leave him after 1994; they were just redirected. His smarts and skating aren't talked about much, but they were major reasons he could be such an effective predator on the ice when looking for a big hit.

One thing about Stevens - before 1994, he was generally among the league leaders in even strength points, and he actually led all defensemen in even strength points in 1993-94. But he never put up as strong a performance on the PP, even back when he was used on the first unit. By compariosn, Bourque's perfomance on the PP is what won him the Norris in 1993-94 by a razor thin margin.

that seems to be NJ specific, right? he had some huge PP seasons in washington.
 

67 others

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Jul 30, 2010
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It's not out of the realm of possibility. Stevens' skating ability and hockey smarts didnt leave him after 1994; they were just redirected. His smarts and skating aren't talked about much, but they were major reasons he could be such an effective predator on the ice when looking for a big hit.

One thing about Stevens - before 1994, he was generally among the league leaders in even strength points, and he actually led all defensemen in even strength points in 1993-94. But he never put up as strong a performance on the PP, even back when he was used on the first unit. By compariosn, Bourque's perfomance on the PP is what won him the Norris in 1993-94 by a razor thin margin.
That and Bourque's pure defensive play was ranked significantly higher at that point as well.
 

blood gin

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Jan 17, 2017
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He was getting older but Lemaire reigned him in and asked him to play a more defensive game. Which he obliged.

His offensive game was always pretty solid. Just never great at any level. Good passer. Good shot. Good skater. Very well rounded. It's just back then guys like Housley and Coffey and and others were the ones wowing you with their offensive prowess. Not Stevens
 

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