I get that this is instantly inflammatory for some, but bear with me. We can never have enough hockey talk on here anyways and this is as good of a topic that I've seen.
Ovechkin is not as important to his team as Karlsson is to the Senators. Nobody is IMO. I've watched quite a few Sens games over the last couple of years mostly because I love watching Karlsson, and the Sens play "high event hockey" which is infinitely more fun than what most teams play nowadays.
Karlsson is over a PPG pace and doesn't have any elite forwards to feed. It's truly incredible what he's doing. Virtually every statistic says he's elite, yet you always see detractors say he's poor defensively. He's not, that's narrative not reality. Remember the difference in between Calgary with Giordano/Brodie and without last year? The numbers suggest that's the same with Karlsson, but almost double in many cases. The guy is one of the best defensemen on the planet, and is suggest he's the best.
Here's an article worth reading:
http://m.thn.com/blog/the-norris-isn...e-hart-trophy/
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ut I don’t think enough credit is being given to how great Karlsson has played so far. After Sunday night’s game Karlsson has 45 points in 43 games, an 86 point pace. In this era, that’s elite level scoring for any player – only Jamie Benn topped the mark last season. For a defensemen? It’s practically absurd. Not one D-man has picked up more than 85 points in a season since Brian Leetch did it in the 1995-96 season. That was 20 years ago – in a higher scoring era to boot.
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Since December his usage has increased even further as he’s averaged just over 30:25 minutes per game, including a preposterous 36:34 minute effort on December 20 against Tampa Bay. Should he continue playing at this rate, Karlsson could eclipse Chris Pronger’s ATOI record of 30:14 back in 1999-00. Pronger won the Hart Trophy that year and is the only defensemen to win it since Bobby Orr won three straight.
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