Which team has the best centre spine right now?

[wingnutks]

Other than Penguins and Kings, shout out to Boston.

Krejci - Bergeron - Soderberg

Each guy plays a very different game but they all do it very well. Soderberg underrated

Soderberg is having and excellent year!

Krejci's numbers are pretty poor this year.

 

[Arthur*]

Soderberg is having and excellent year!

Krejci's numbers are pretty poor this year.

Krejci's missed a lot of time with a hip injury, which has compromised him when he has played.

if the Bruins were to get a top 9 forward so that Chris Kelly could drop down to 4C, then they'd deifnitely be up there on the list of the best center cores in hockey.

 

[Ragamuffin Gunner]

lol, I love these threads. Everyone just posts their teams player/line/GM/ect.

It's PIT then LA then everyone else.

 

[wingnutks]

lol, I love these threads. Everyone just posts their teams player/line/GM/ect.

It's PIT then LA then everyone else.

I however love how no one, including those saying Pit and LA, are not posting a single stat other than AINEC%

 

[PositiveCashFlow]

Gotta be Edmonton

RNH
Draisaitl
Arcobello
Gordon

Half the GM's in the league would want to swap their roster with ours

 

[cali101]

and the winner is … this post. says it all, really. shore and weal would probably have had a cup of coffee for sure on other teams by now.

To be fair LAs haven't really been playing up to usual par lately which is maybe why people are forgetting about them, plus Carter is playing winger right now because Sutter wanted to quarantine all the suck on one line until they got better (which they did), but usually, we're talking about Kopitar, Carter, Richards, Stoll down the middle with also Lewis schlepping around the lineup as need be. Toffoli is not a center. Nolan is very rarely a center enough that I wouldn't consider him one. But neither Nick Shore nor Jordan Weal can even get a sniff of our lineup and they're trying hard to break down the door. As I said earlier, it may not be as high-end elite as Pitt on paper, but there's a reason these guys won (yes, there are other parts on the team but you can see how other western teams reacted to our depth by acquiring Stastny, Kesler, etc.).

Kopitar
Carter
Richards
Stoll
(Lewis)
(Shore)
(Weal)

 

[Mayo8898]

Sharks currently

Thornton/Couture/Sheppard/Desjardins

What it should be

Thornton/Couture/Pavelski/Desjardins

Foreseeable Future

Couture/Hertl/Tierney/Desjardins

*All the natural centers on the team: Thornton, Couture, Marleau, Hertl, Wingels, Desjardins

 

[El Nino 22]

Penguins by a mile. When your top two centers are both better than any other player in the league it doesn't matter who your other two are. But the other two are good too.

 

[Halpysback*]

Caps are best

Backstrom
Kuznetsov
Burakovsky
Laich
Fehr
Latta
Beagle

 

[vendetta]

It's gotta be oilers ainec. .they also tame best d core, best goalie tandem, and best front office4 /thread

 

[Cult of Hynes]

LA has the strongest center depth IMO. I'd say the Islanders are in the mix as well.

 

[bambamcam4ever]

Gretzky also didn't cheap shot people as much, Crosby is pretty dirty himself which makes it a lot likely people will go after him.
And he used to have protection, you retaliate his cheap shots and you have people like tanner glass coming out to try to end your career.
Players don't respect that.
Nor should they.
The pens are trying to get away from the dirty stuff though, so eventually it'll sort itself out if Crosby understands that he has to control himself it'll happen less frequently. But he's just as guilty as the opposition when it comes to cheap shots.

This is one of the best posts I have seen on HF.

First of all, Tanner Glass is going to end someone's career? The guy never threw a hard hit his entire tenure as a Penguin, to say nothing of his complete lack of ability as a hockey player.

Also, Crosby receives at least tenfold the abuse (and that's being conservative) he gives out to any other player. He gets frustrated by the constant abuse and illegal play that the refs turn a blind eye to and when he finally does retaliate, fans of rival teams on this site line up to make threads about how he is classless or a cheap player.

 

[Arrch]

*All the natural centers on the team: Thornton, Couture, Marleau, Hertl, Wingels, Desjardins

Pavelski? Sheppard?

 

[dlawong]

Centre strength and depth are important as it is much easier for centre to play wing than to try wing at centre. It matters when there is injury to your top line centres. That is why Olympic teams and WJC teams seems to opt for a team loaded with multiple centres and have the centres playing as wingers rather than picking high scoring wings who cannot play centre positions.

If all teams are healthy, definitely the Pens have the best centre talents in this league now but in a two or three years, things can change with emergence of some of the very young talented centres/prospects in this league while Crosby and Malkin may slowly decline in their games. If Pens are smart, they should start to draft some young centre prospects to fill their cupboards.

Islanders are not there yet, but they are heading for the right direction, because they always value the centre positions quite highly.

 

[zaYG]

Despite the mediocrity of the entire team, a healthy Bruins roster has Soderberg getting to eat apart third pairings due to Bostons center depth.