- Dec 20, 2018
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Quinn Hughes turns 22 in October, has only played 129 regular season NHL games and played 56 of those in a brutal condensed schedule that barely allowed for any full practice days.I really don't get how this board as a consensus can lay into a player like Barrie but then turn around and call Hughes a top pairing or even a #1 guy?
I don't know if its a bias towards overrating younger players or what it could possibly be, but as of now Barrie is better both offensively and defensively and I don't think anyone, even his own mother, considers him a #1dman.
The truth of both Hughes and Barrie lies somewhere in the middle. Offensively they are #1 guys (top 30 in the league quite easily). Defensively both are bottom pairing level at best, probably even worse for Hughes who got his head caved in this year due to Tanev's departure.
So if you average #1 offense with #6 defense you get a 1-dimensional #3 guy. Luckily for Hughes he has time to improve due to his age, but anyone calling him a top pairing guy after this past season has disgustingly low standards.
Barrie turned 30 in July and has played 610 regular season over 10 seasons.
The some of the people who are voting 1D seem to be basing that on “on Vancouver he is”. (Which I guess brings up the debate of what a 1D is.) You can debate that but I don’t know what Barrie has to with the upside of a much younger player.
And I don’t see him doing worse without Tanev reflecting poorly on Quinn. That’s on Benning.
The idea that Quinn, after only 73 regular season games, could be paired up with some randos (a cooked Hamonic, Jordie Benn with Quinn playing on his off-side), with no pre-season games and few functional practices, and then he would excel with top pair minutes in that brutal meat grinder season was, I would argue, a dumb idea.
He’s not Hedman-esque or finished product so he shouldn’t have been expected to do the heavy lifting on a defensive pair and his needing a helpful pairing like Tanev isn’t a sin.