I agree, the term "5C" is not common parlance, but it's entirely clear in the way it was described and what it means. It's absolutely applicable to
literal "Swiss Army Knife" utility players like Pius Suter.
It's not often described in common discourse because a lot of people seem to look at it with that overly simplistic mentality of the bolded. That idea that ignores what makes for an actually effective 4th liner. Suter doesn't really have that...which is where his better fit is either as a stopgap/fill-in middle-6 Center or as a Top-9 Winger.
Think about Team Canada back when best on best tournaments used to still be a thing. They always had to make some decisions about taking certain players to fill a "4th line" role. Rather than just taking the 12 most skilled Forwards. They went out of their way to make sure they were selecting guys who were "Top-6 Caliber" but had skillsets and style of play that could be effective in a de fact "4th line" or "checking role" in more limited minutes. This isn't a videogame where guys just have a "rating". Performance isn't strictly scalable with minutes.
Ex// Suter would be a better injury replacement fill-in for a Top-6C. But Bluegers would be a far better 4C. It's not a complicated concept at all if you can actually think about the nuance of hockey and roster construction, rather than just a ranked hierarchy.
Gaudette is also a player in the same mold as Suter...but
much much worse. That same issue where he might be better as a C, but not good enough there to actually want to play him at C if you have a choice. Not really a 4th line player who can be effective crashing and banging and playing with energy...not a matchup player. Not skilled enough to want in your Top-6.
The difference in ability level makes Suter something like a Top-9W/5C type
clearly NHL caliber utility player. Whereas Gaudette is an AHL journeyman fringe guy. But there are some parallels in the type of tweener player they are.
The whole "takeaways" stat is one of the most overrated defensive metrics for me. For one thing, it's a bit like the "hits" statistic in that it can seem a little bit subjective to begin with. But also more importantly, guys who are racking up tons of "takeaways" are inherently players who didn't have the puck and keep the puck to begin with. Which is where smart, responsible puck management > "takeaways" for me.
For example, you can have a guy dump the puck in intelligently in a way that is very responsible defensively and gives his linemates a good chance to forecheck and recover it. Or even just make a clean line change. That's not going to look good on most metrics like a "takeaway" will, but it's still a very solid defensively responsible play.
I don't think that's true. Suter is capable of playing Center in the NHL. I just think he's a bit of an odd utility fit player. The sort of guy who you don't really
want to have to deploy at any of your 4 "healthy roster" Center spots 1 through 4 because he's not really ideally suited to any of them on a strong team. Suter absolute can and has deployed as a Center, largely because he's spent his entire NHL career on teams that aren't ideally constructed and
don't have better options. Vancouver is going to be no exception to this.
As far as Bonino...he was an okay 3C. I despised the player because his lead boots in wet cement skating made him exceedingly unpleasant and physically difficult to watch clomping his way around the ice. But he was positionally sound, a decent puck distributor, capable of handling fairly difficult minutes and breaking even. If anything, i think his absolutely abysmal skating made him a Center through and through, because he simply couldn't handle the stop-start demands of the Wing all that well.
The situation you're describing was also a completely atypical outlier as well. He was the #3C in the sense that he was behind Croz and Geno, but he was flanked by a bona fide first line scoring winger in Kessel who absolutely carried that line.
That does make it somewhat applicable to our situation with Suter, in that i
think that's more or less what the idea is going to be with deploying him. It's where, if i'm Ricky boy, the very first thing i'm doing with Suter is stapling him to Garland and finding out if they jive. If they do, i think it could be a very serviceable poor man's version of that HBK line. And that's where i appreciate this signing's potential intent, even if i don't particularly care for the specific player at all.
I literally forgot Shawn Matthias ever even existed.
Faceoff % doesn't really matter so much in and of itself...but it
does become important when looked at contextually. A faceoff at center ice, who cares? A DZone faceoff at a critical point in the game? That matters. Winning the puck to start a Powerplay with possession? That's huge for efficiently using those 2 minutes. Similarly, winning a PK faceoff and forcing the other team to run back out the zone and reset wasting time is undeniably important to a PK.
There are ways to work around it though anyway. Plenty of wingers who can step in for a draw if needed.
I think this is actually the component of the Suter signing that i like best. Before signing him, we had literally
nobody in the entire organization who could conceivably step into a Top-6 Center spot in the case of an injury and not fully embarrass themselves. Suter is a guy who despite not being an ideal #3C fit...has actually spent a decent amount of his career as a stopgap Top-6C. He's not a guy you
want to be playing there, but if it happens...he's got more utility there than someone like Bluegers or whatever. Just have to lean hard on the Wingers to make things happen. Which should theoretically be the strength of our team, with how much we've got invested there.
This is the kind of bullshit that seems to be making people think Suter is something he's not.
It characterizes his production in the context of being a "4th liner" when that's not really where most of his production comes from. He played almost a quarter of his last season as a Top-6 C/W. With guys like Larkin and Raymond. Before that, he played most of his minutes in a de facto Top-6 role with guys like Fabbri, Bertuzzi, Vrana. His rookie year being weighted here, he was basically glued to Patty Kane in a 1st line role.
These goofy ass charts are comparing his production impacts relative to a "4th liner" icetime, when that's never really been the role he's played most of his minutes in. It's nonsense.
I wouldn't be surprised at all if he hits his ~15G 35Pts sort of range with Vancouver this year. Especially if there's an injury to Petey or JT and he slips up to backfill the void. But he's not and hasn't ever really been a 4C.
It's not contrarian to try to more accurately address and describe the sort of player Suter
actually is. The term 5C may be a bit unfamiliar, but it hits the nail on the head with what he truly is as a player.
Again, you're looking at it like a juvenile learning to count and rank things in order. "
Surely a stopgap 2C is better than a 4C because number is better". Rather than taking a nuanced look at what the player has actually done and where he fits. Actually describing the way a player fits within a roster.
The whole thing with putting Suter "ahead of" Bluegers, is down to two things. 1)People just looking at his production. but also 2)It's just natural to slot him in at the "3C" spot because of the glut of scoring-line Wingers we have, who need a guy like Suter more than they need a straight line limited puck distributor like Bluegers.
That distinction between Lines 3 and 4 might actually end up being completely negligible in 5v5 icetime. More down to "role" and "deployment".
Yeah. This is ultimately what it comes down to. Bluegers plays a prototypical "4th line" game of North-South and he'll generate his points that way, but not going to be a great facilitator for creative skilled wingers we have cascading down out of the Top-6. Suter has played most of his career with "skill players" in some form of scoring role. So it makes sense as a signing in that he should be able to at least give them an option at C who can play with those skill guys like Hoggy/Podz/Garland/etc. in a Tertiary scoring role.
It takes a messy aspect of our roster construction and tries to make it make a little bit more sense.
