MTL's good. Thats all I know.

What stats are you basing this off? I'm pretty sure Pittsburgh's best defensive forward is ZAR.

Yeah, I wanna know too, Aho isn't as good defensively as Staal, Nino or even Teravainen

Hyman/Kapanen > Marner

TOI
Takeaways/Giveaways
SH-TOI
BLKS

Rust is 3rd on the penguins amongst forwards for ice time per game. He is 6th amongst forwards for takeaways. Bryan Rust is 4th on short handed time on ice.
ZAR is 12th on penguins amongst forwards for time on ice per game. ZAR is 9th forward in takeaways. ZAR is 5th on short handed time on ice (pretty much identical to Rust's penalty kill time)

Sebastian Aho 71 takeaways vs Staal's 30. Sebastian Aho plays only about 30 seconds less on average on the PK compared to Staal. Sebastian Aho lead the Hurricanes with 4 short handed goals. Aho had a very good defensive year for Carolina and I'm shocked you would make such a claim.

Marner plays 20 plus minutes a night, he is 2nd on the leafs in takeaways, marner leads all toronto forwards in short handed time on ice.

Although Kapanen isn't too far behind, but Marner is quietly a solid two way forward for Toronto. Hyman only played less than 53 games this season so I took the player who has played more games.

Goli was the worst defensive player on ARZ, I'd take Hino Fischer or Dvo over Stepan as well
Risto was also probably the worst defensive player on the sabres (maybe Montour)
Pesce and Dougie were both better defensively than Slavin, and Aho was probably the worst defensive player on CAR...
I'd go Backlund or Ryan in CGY
Koekkoek DeHaan Maata and Murphy were all (significantly) better than Keith defensively
Savard (and Gavrikov) over Jones
Ian Cole is a very good DFD, and the best on COL, and Nuke blew everyone else out of the water defensively on COL (and most of the league)
Oleksiak>Heisk>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>x50000000 Lindell (defensively obv Heisk>>>>>>x5000 Oleksiak overall)
It's gotta be Mantha or Bert, the rest of the team was such a tire fire (aside from Larkin obv)
Bear and Yammamoto (or Archibald if you want a full season)
Weegar and Hubes>>
Doughty was probably the worst DFD on LAK, Roy Walker and Hutton were all a lot better
Spurgeon or Brodin>>>>>>>Suter, and while JEE is very very good defensively, the king of low event forwards happens to be Marcus Foligno
Butcher>>>, and I'm gonna give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you would have put Coleman as a run away winner had he not been traded
back to having the worst defensive player on the team in Trouba (well... Staal, it's hard to be worse than him at much of anything as an NHLer) and Panarin was simply the best overall player in the league this year...
Zaitsev actively hurts his team while he's on the ice, he's the farthest thing from good defensively (tho both of those statements apply to a lot of the players you listed...)
Couts absolutely blew everyone on PHI out of the water, they weren't in the same universe
Dumo/ZAR. (who just happened to be one of the best defensive forwards in the game this year)
Definately not Couture, I'd argue Hertl or Meier as well
EP in VAN.
Carlson was the worst defender on that team...
I'd argue Demelo, but if you don't want to count him... is nobody an option...? and for forwards, you could argue Ehlers over Copp, but certainly not Connor, not only was he one of the worst defensive forwards on the team, he was probably one of the bottom 5-10 defensive players in the league...

Some, actually, most of those guys you’ve mentioned aren’t playing in the penalty kill. Some of those guys aren’t nearly playing enough minutes than the guys I’ve mentioned.

I factor in very heavily the competition these players are going up against which is why I rarely chose a bottom 6 forward or a 3rd pairing dman. Short handed time on ice was a big factor, if you’re not killing penalties then I take that as a huge factor. Takeaways is also pretty important to me as well as blocked shots. I also took in offensive zone starts vs defensive zone starts into consideration. Also games played is factored. This is for the 2019-20 season so you need to have enough games played to be mentioned. Someone like Dougie was hurt for most of the year

All in all, all of those players I’ve listed are top in those categories for their team. They are all playing solid minutes and going up against good competition

If you don’t want to consider PK time, that’s fine we can agree to disagree to that. But I think that’s a big part of someone’s game is to be able to be good enough to be on the PK

ik for a fact ZAR had like top 10% QoC in the league, and TK's are basically irrelevant, and zone starts aren't much more relevant, most players shifts start in the NZ/OTF anyway, so the difference between the highest and lowest Zone Starts is not a ton, and PK TOI is a weird one, teams usually have set PK units, and rely more on the system than the players actually being good defensively, I'd much rather look at defensive stats from 5v5 instead (xGA, EVD, maybe some CA, Micah's Magnus model etc)

For Columbus Savard > Jones and Wennberg > Folingo.

Just look at the Selke votes for example. They do in fact factor in takeaways, toi, SH toi ,etc. I completely understand where you’re coming from the players you’ve mentioned. They are indeed solid defensively for their teams

But I will choose the player who is logging the more minutes and posting decent stats rather than a player who isn’t seeing as much game action. Takeaways are still very relevant.

It’s all a debate of who can be the best defensively. I choose players who are playing against the top competition, you factor in the players who are good defensively but on those third pairings or bottom 6 roles. Which is totally fine! It would be a much different story if we were comparing players of any lines that they are playing on

I put absolutely 0 weight in Selke votes... if anything I use them to tell me who isn't the best defensive forward in the game

TOI is a thing yes, but it also limits the amount of TK's a player has, if a guy only plays 12 minutes a game, and has 50 TK's vs a guy who plays 18 mins a game and has 60 TK's, I'm taking the guy who plays 12 mins (assuming everything else is identical)

Also the difference between the hardest and weakest QoT in 99.9% of cases is minimal at best, like +/- 0.05 xGF/60 in opponents for the majority of players...

Understand your point and agreed (for some parts) but need those players that play against tough competition to also be able to shutdown/contain the opponents and produce for their team. Guys like Ristolainen, Doughty, Carlson play big minutes but can't defend.
Some people also separate Offense/PP/Defense/PK into four different stats so they could disagree.

I completely get that those big name guys were brutal defensively this year. But that tells me they are simply the best option on those teams. The only one who could’ve beaten Carlson would’ve been Orlov but it was so close

I just use different factors than others which is no big deal. I didn’t use crazy fancy analytics to determine my players I’ve listed. I kept it simple with only about 4 or 5 different categories and based on those categories, those players were top on their teams. But it’s interesting to see others point of view, that’s where the debates come in

Oooof. Well that explains it.

I wouldn't say nurse is good defensively. I'd counter with klefbom or larsson or even russell but he plays in a bottom pair role

So, you're using short handed points and takeaways? Not the fact Staal and Nino had double the D zone starts, Aho was a - in expected goals against wheras Staal Nino and TT were all strong positive? We're also gona ignore the fact that Aho was one of the worst defensive players in the league in terms of xGA when you take Teravainen away? Making any claim to say Aho was good defensively this year is a lie. I love Aho, but defence ain't his speciality

bear is better at defense than nurse

I'm not sure what's going one here. I know for sure that SH points, takeaways and ice time are not the best way to judge a player's defence. If you factor in deployment and take into account the quality of teammate and competition, things are a bit different. Playing on the PK doesn't mean you're a good defensive player. Someone might get played on the PK because of a lack of better options like Zaitsev on the Sens. Overall, stats like xGA and CA and more advanced stats like EVD and the use of RAPM are more useful. If you take things into account and isolate a player, you can really see their defensive abilities. Guys like Risto, Zaitsev and Doughty were at the very bottom of the league in most defensive stats and guys like ZAR were at the top.