Quote:
Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague
Doughty's actually ranked 8th... behind such great defensemen as Roman Polak, Matt Hunwick and Nick Schultz. Might it be possible that given that Karlsson plays 30 minutes a night already, they don't also want him on the PK, when they have other guys who can do that job more or less competently? Maybe he's best deployed where he can best help the team?
Even if that weren't the case, PK TOI is a coaching decision and doesn't reflect player skill necessarily. Show me the actual results that suggest that Doughty's a better PK'er than Karlsson.
Third, PK is a minute portion of the game. It's less than 20% of a defenseman's total TOI even if he PK's a lot. Even strength is far more important than special teams.
As for soft minutes, they actually both get them. The CF per 60 of Doughty's opponents is 53.90, which puts him 56th out of 64 d-men with more than 1000 mins of ice time this season. Karlsson's opponents get 53.58 CF per 60, which is 63rd of 64. Compared to other high-minute defensemen, neither of these guys get sent out to deal with the players who send a lot of rubber at the net. Which is a coaching decision too, but it's one that makes some sense; they can produce more for their own side if they're not facing down Getzlaf and Perry all the time.
|
This was quite a fun read.
If a player plays a lot of PK that means the coach trusts him to play PK. Special teams are the most important part of the game and the most important minutes. Games are won and lost by special teams. The coach doesn't trust Karlsson to be a regular PKer and I'm assuming there is some sort of reason for it.
Probably the same reason that Karlsson is always paired with a shutdown defensemen. He would get exposed way more often if he wasn't paired with players like Methot.
Remember when the Sedin's were forced into the 1st PK unit? They had terrible seasons and their lowest point production to date. I bet we'd see the same if Karlsson had less even strength/PP minutes and actually had to PK.