Significantly Insignificant said:
bustaheims said:
Significantly Insignificant said:
I'm also not sure that Matthews is a once-in-a-blue-moon centre. He is probably in the same camp as the Seguin, Toews, Stamkos, Tavares, Eichel which is the really good, bonafide first line center camp, but not the Crosby, McDavid camp.
I imagine, when people refer to scarcity regarding Matthews, it's less about him being in the absolute upper echelon, but, rather, in the scarcity in opportunities teams have to acquire bonafide first line Cs. There are only so many out there at any give time, and that number is usually smaller than the number of teams in the league.
Agreed. I find that the hype around Matthews may be getting peoples expectations out of proportion to the player that he is likely to become. He's probably not a player that is going to win multiple Art Ross trophies or the Maurice Richard trophy. He's a player though that you can point to and say "there is the Leafs 1C for the next 10 years."
In general though, deciding that a player is a 1C is a hard thing to quantify. For example, is Niklas Backstrom a first line center? Is Bergeron or Kreici? Is Toews for that matter. Each one of those centers brings something different to the table. Some teams, it's just the best center of the group.
Backstrom - Yes. He's Top 15 in the League bar-none, even if alot of his offense comes on the PP instead of at 5v5. He's pretty good defensively too.
Bergeron - Yes. One of the TOP 3 Centers defensively and still puts up respectable offense.
Krejci - No. He's a good 2nd line center IMO.
Toews - Do I even have to answer that? He's Top 5 in the NHL, bar none.
Here's my list of the Top 20 Center's in the NHL and you can decide at what point you'd stop labeling them True Bonafide #1 Centers:
Crosby
Toews
McDavid
Tavares
Malkin
Stamkos
Getzlaf (falling quickly)
Kopitar
Seguin
Backstrom
Bergeron
Pavelski
Giroux
Johansen
Johnson (Tyler)
Thornton
Couture
Backes
Nugent-Hopkins
Sedin
Btw, my list probably stops at Tyler Johnson and I'm on the fence with him. Duchene, MacKinnon, Barkov, Eichel, and Schieffle are all knocking on the door. Door has closed on Datsyuk and Zetterberg and is coming up quick on Sedin and Thornton from my Top 20 list.
Goes to show there aren't many in the league and when you have a chance to draft one, you probably shouldn't turn it down. Unless, you know, we have been tampering and have Stamkos already committed to us.