News Article: The Athletic Lists contenders, puts Theodore among elite

[Vegan Knight]

Per an Athletic article (paywall)

Analysis: How close is every NHL team to being a contender?

The Athletic used a GSVA score (a metric they use with analytics and box score) to judge the most valuable players on a team and then they determine the team's contending status from that.

Team was listed at 13th in the league, 5th west and 2nd Pacific. At 94.5 point projection in the table.

Shea Theodore had the 7th highest of their GSVA score among defensemen (Josi, Hedman, Letang, Carlson, Pietrangelo and Giordano were ahead of him) in the entire league. The second highest number of any player on the team and one of only two Golden Knights (Stone being the other) in Elite category.

Is Theodore elite now?

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[IceNeophyte]

He's been the singular bright spot on VGK's defense all year, so I agree with the article.

 

[The Duck Knight]

He's elite offensively, not defensively. Advanced stats lend themselves to prop up the great offensive dmen. He'll never be a true #1 to me until he's actually counted on to take on the toughest defensive matchups and kill penalties.

 

[Vegan Knight]

He's elite offensively, not defensively. Advanced stats lend themselves to prop up the great offensive dmen. He'll never be a true #1 to me until he's actually counted on to take on the toughest defensive matchups and kill penalties.

He's getting way more ice time now because DeBoer is leaning on him in the tough situations. And I think I trust Theodore more than Schmidt to skate a puck out of danger, or pass the puck out of the zone, or to get more takeaways than giveaways, or to not make a mistake in their own end, or to make a good defensive play (at least this season.)

And it is much harder to keep the puck in our defensive zone when Theodore is on the ice. I think he's been our best defenseman defensively, as well.

 

[CupInSIX]

'Elite' elite or 'Tyson Barrie' elite?

I think he's a better version of Barrie. If he keeps this going in the playoffs things are looking good.

 

[theslatcher]

He's getting way more ice time now because DeBoer is leaning on him in the tough situations. And I think I trust Theodore more than Schmidt to skate a puck out of danger, or pass the puck out of the zone, or to get more takeaways than giveaways, or to not make a mistake in their own end, or to make a good defensive play (at least this season.)

And it is much harder to keep the puck in our defensive zone when Theodore is on the ice. I think he's been our best defenseman defensively, as well.

That's actually not that true, remove the Montreal game and his ice time has been pretty much on par with under Turk, only thing is that he hasn't had a sub-20 min game, like he had every 10 game or so with Turkz