Quote:
Originally Posted by SuperMatt18
I never argued that he wasn't playing on the second line, lots of good players play on second lines.
The argument was he was never a middle 6 forward, he was generally still always top 3 in EV TOI, and he was producing at a top 10 clip at 5v5, PP, and 3v3.
I know how he was used, I didn't need you to explain it to me.
Was he an elite play driving forward - nope. His underlying stats were never great and he was never really a guy that was a huge play driver. But he was a guy that could produce points and generate offense with the best in the game. He probably wasn't ever worth $10.5M due to his flaws, but he should easily have been able to continue his point per game page that he's been at for a while.
And it's not just grabbing his best seasons...it's the 5 seasons immediately before coming to Calgary, which generally coincide with the prime of a players career. What happened when he was 22 back in 2015/2016 is irrelevant to his play now.
Either way you slice it calling him a "middle 6 forward" is ridiculous. He never played third line, he was always at worst a top 6 forward.
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Ok, well that's fair, and it sounds more like the problem is with my definition of a middle six forward (which doesn't really have anything to do with playing on the third line, but it accounts for players playing on the third line because of the same reasons a top six player would be playing on the second line).
Top six are either top line players or second line players that would otherwise be top line players but are on the second line becuse there's someone better at their position playing ahead of them, or they're young and getting experience, etc. They're just essentially first line players.
Middle six are either second line players or third line players that would otherwise be second line players but are on the third line becuse there's someone better at their position playing ahead of them, or they're young and getting experience, etc. They're just essentially second line players.
Bottom six is just like the first two, except they're essentially third line players.
I mean, I get that it would be weird to call Crosby "just" a top six player, even though he technically fits my definition of one... and maybe that's why it's weird to call Huberdeau "just" a middle six player. Although, with Huberdeau, he's very much a middle six player now, regardless of definitions.