Quoting: BeautifulIdiot
Centre is the easiest position to fill? a #1 Centre is the easiest position to fill? Dobson is good but he has less value than Hughes and Hughes is more than a point per game, the only things that Dobson does better than hughes is be big and shoot. Hughes is better in literally every other facet and hughes isnt near as valuable as pettersson. Petey is probably going to get selke votes this year and probably a few hart votes too. You would have to throw Raty, Dobson ++ to get Petey and it isnt even an argument. Yes RD's are super valuable but more valuable than a 1C? No chance
Quoting: Wqrrior
think ya got rose colored glasses on mate
heck your motto is "dobson for norris". That literally checkmates your arguments.
Go rank RD and centers and tell me who ranks higher. I can get really technical or I can make it simple and I will start with simple.
The 30th best center is much closer to the 10th best center than the 30th best RD is to the tenth best RD. (i did 30 cuz ive always done comparisons over 30 since there used to be 30 teams so I did top 30 centers were first line caliber, 31-60 2nd line, etc)
Rank RD and Dobson is a top 6/7 RD, Petterson is barely top 20, around 18/19. I will list them here, too. No particular order
McDavid, Matthews, Mackinnon, Draisatl, Larkin, Point, Crosby, Tage Thompson, Barkov, Aho, Hughes, Stamkos (depending on what you count him as), Mika, Suzuki, ROR, Thomas, Barzal, Eichel, Hertl, Hintz, Lindholm. Then a few more like Hischier, Malkin, and Scheifele.
Right defenseman:
Makar, Fox, McAvoy, and Ekblad. Then a solid argument for Weeger and Seider, then that is really it. It gets close with Marino, Andersson, Pulock and Hamilton but even then, he is top 11. After that it gets down to the Carlson, Letang, EK65, Pietrangelo, Larsson.
Also my motto is Dobson for Norris because he was analytical one of the best defenseman in the NHL last season. 9.4 GAR, 14.0 xGAR, 9.3 xOFFWAR, 50 points, all while playing with Zdeno Chara and Andy Greene, both of whom had some of the worst single season performances of the 21 century. Dobson also has 8 goals in 27 games.
Pettersson has never once been a PPG throughout an entire season. It is much easier to find a center to replace him than it is to replace Dobson. We arent talking about EA Franchise mode overalls, we are talking about real life positional value. We see defenseman go for hauls and RD rarely ever get traded.
I am sure neither of you will read all of this, but I encourage you to do so. You break down WAR by position and the Canucks are one of the worst in the NHL at RD, while the Islanders are in the top 50% (would be above the 90th percentile if Cizikas wasn't having the worst statistical season ever by an NHL player since WAR has been tracked).
Dobson's value to the average NHL team far exceeds Petterson's. It is no knock to Petterson, I love him, but it is just plain facts that it is harder to get an elite defenseman. And if you wanted to break it down by tiers, it would be even easier. Because there are maybe a dozen elite RD, while there are dozens of elite centers. I had Cirelli and PLD outside of my top 30 centers heading into the season, Cody Ceci, who actually had a solid 21-22 season, was my 31st, followed by Jeff Petry and Chris Tanev
EDIT: I also forgot to mention that Dobson has 3 years at 4 mil and he is then an RFA, Petterson is 2 years til RFA, with over a 10.25 qualifying offer... Dobson's is somehow only just over 4 mil lol