Agree 100%. Was Larsson solid ? Yes. But people give WAY too much credit for what is only one solid year beside Greene. As I explained
here, Larsson has really become overrated defensively by some. Just to be clear, I like him and I think he has potential to be a nice two-way defenseman, but some people are really overstating his last season in NJ.
Disagree. Larsson is an elite defenseman, and IMO carried the pairing with Greene. Their really isn't an aspect of defensive hockey where he's not at the level of at least a top 2 dman. On a scale of 10, with 8 equivalent to the skill of a #2 dman, 9 a #1 dman, and 10 being an all star dman, I'd say his defensive skills rank as follows:
Gap control? 8.5/10
Positional discipline? 9/10
Board battles? 8.5/10
Controlled breakout? 10/10
Reading the play? 9/10
Stick work? 9.5/10
Penalty Kill? 9/10
Defending the net? 8/10
He's even begun to develop a bit of a mean streak. His gap control would be 10/10 if he had quicker feet, though he's improved immensely in that category.
Beyond that, and to the point you made in your linked post, Larsson is an extremely underrated offensive player. He's maybe the best I've seen at getting shots past the first shot blocker. He has a tremendous first pass and excels at controlled breakouts, which may not end up earning him a ton of points, but is certainly an indirect offensive catalyst. I'd say rate his offensive skills as follows:
Controlled breakout: 10/10
First pass: 9.5/10
Puck carrying: 5/10
Transition offense: 6.5/10
One timer: 6/10
Wrist shot: 8.5/10
PP QB: 7.5/10
Offensive blue line: 7/10
In zone vision: 9/10
That would put him as a 7.7 with all skills weighted equally, which would imply he's between a #2 and #3
offensive defenseman. I'd say there are roughly 30-40 true top 2 defenseman in the league, so I'd rank him around 40 in terms of pure offensive defenseman in the league. He should be good for ~35-40 points over a full season if put in a more 2 way role. 35 points would have placed him 38th among NHL defenseman this past year. For context, he's 52nd in the league in 5v5 points from defenseman over the past 2 seasons, despite playing primarily in a shut down role with some of the toughest matchups in the league.
His biggest weaknesses as a younger player were footspeed and over confidence with D zone passing when trying to relieve pressure (he was so good at controlled breakouts on big rinks outside of the NHL that it took him some time to adjust to the speed of the forecheck). But he's taking his skating from a D+ to a solid B. And the mental mistakes are a thing of the past.
As for McLeod vs Brown, not sure why are we talking about that since the Devils didn't have the choice anyway. I may have missed something here, but Brown went before McLeod so it's kinda worthless to discuss about that IMO.
The Devils could have drafted Brown, but decided to trade down a spot. That's why the comparison exists. We got in exchange a 3rd rounder which was flipped to get Beau Bennett, which made the move a bit more bearable for me, because I've always liked Bennett's game (been saying for a while that he reminds me of a slower Elias).
But then we only signed him to a 1 year contract for cheap. I would have much preferred we treated him like potentially a big part of the franchise if he can stay healthy, and given him a 4 year $3-4M deal (I think he'd take it given he signed for like 750k).
It just seemed weird that we would trade down a spot that high in the draft for what amounts to 1 year of a player that management values at only $750k.
This is as true as it gets
