Because half those points are on the power play. At 5 on 5 he’s a mediocre 3rd pair d man. So did you just skip over the second half of my post? Good PP specialist. At 5 on 5 he NEEDS to be sheltered.

Why waste your time then? You can go elsewhere. There’s plenty of other places out there. I don’t think anyone will be shedding any tears.

Hughes is not a third pairing guy. He’s a good offensive dman with offensive skill. However, Slavin may be 1000x better. Q Hughes is one of the worst defensive dmen in the league. I wouldn’t trust him when Canada, Sweden, Russia, Finland, etc send their best players at him when he can’t handle guys that are worse than them. Slavin is a top 5 defensive dman in the world. He is not a slouch on offense either. Slavin doesn’t need to be a star offensively on this team. I’d rather have a guy that is not a liability on defense against the best in the world. Q Hughes is not as bad as CMcAvoy73 is saying but Slavin is better and there is no argument about that

First off, i think you quoted the wrong post.

Second off, you realize that a third pairing guy can be an offensive defensemen, right? For example: Torey Krug spent years and years and the bruins third pair, getting a ton of powerplay time. He was a third pair PP specialist. It’s a thing. It’s frequently a thing. It allows a guy with a skill set suited for the powerplay to play sheltered minutes so he doesn’t wind up a -24 on the season.

It sounded like you were saying that he was a third pairing caliber player. When someone says that he’s a third pairing guy, most people think that that person is talking about the fact that his skill set is not good enough to be a higher pairing than that. I think Q Hughes is probably a top four dman CALIBER wise. But I’m fully aware that any skilled dman can play on any pairing

I mean, at 5 on 5, i kinda think he is bottom pair caliber. Obviously his performance on the PP skews things, but here’s the other thing….he wasn’t that great on the PP last year. He got his stats, but I watched a lot of Canucks games because I’m a degen and i loved to bet the over, and against the Canucks. The number of times Pettersson was cocked and ready for a one timer and had to catch the pass and reset because the pass was a foot or two behind him was unreal.

I think he’s a 3rd pair, PP specialist, and he’s gonna get paid like a top pair guy. A real shame for the Canucks.

Fair. I don’t think he should get paid more than 3.5-5mil a season. I don’t think he’s as awful as ur saying bc he is still able to put up more points than many other dman at the highest level in the world as a young guy. But I agree that he is very overrated and should not get paid the big bucks whatsoever

I wouldn’t say that. He was 11th in scoring among d men last season….and he played in pretty much the easiest division that’s ever existed. He didn’t exactly light the world on fire.

What he should get is 80% of McAvoys deal. Comparable as a group two RFA. For some odd reason i have a feeling he’s going to get the big ticket though.

You're ripping this guy for saying Hughes>Slavin, but you seriously thinks Hughes is 3rd pair? You do realize he is a top 10 defenseman in the league when only considering offense, right?

I disagree. He might be top ten in the league at running powerplay.

There seems to be a failure of understanding a key concept here: a player can be a third pair defensemen, and have a greater value than that based on his special teams. Maybe a guy is slow, so he belongs on the third pair but he’s so good on the PK that he has a value greater than that. Likewise, maybe he’s a turnstile (like hughes), but he’s awesome on the PP, so he has more value than that.

Third pair d man isn’t supposed to be some grand qualifier to describe his entire game, third pair just means third pair. Those are the minutes he should get five on five, because five on five is not something he’s good at.

I understand the point you're trying to make, but I disagree he's only a 3rd pairing guy.

Why? He sucks at 5 on 5. Why should someone that sucks at 5 on 5 play more at 5 on 5?

He's not that bad at 5v5.

He's fine to be getting 16-18 minutes a night, maybe even 20 partway through the year.

16 minutes is a third pair d.

He really is that bad at 5 on 5. Absolutely horrible.

My bad, I'm mixed things up a bit.

Do you have some stats to prove how he's 3rd pairing then?

Cmon….don’t be one of those.

Watch the guy play for two seconds and its really damn obvious.

If you really really need something, here’s what i can give you. That said, cmon, there’s no stat that is just going to miraculously tell you if a d man is good at even strength. That’s why the sport is awesome.
He was 22nd in even strength scoring for d men…..in the softest division that’s existed in the cap era. That’s not exactly exciting. Then you couple that with him being a -24, and that’s telling a story. No one in the top 50 d men in scoring at even strength had close to as bad a plus minus as he did. I think there were only three guys ahead of him that were a minus. One was carlson who’s an absolute turnstile. With all those points he had the third worst +/- of d men in the NHL. He stinks out loud at 5 on 5.

Fair, I didn't realize he was only 22nd in power play points, I thought a lot more of his points were from 5v5.