@Adam da bomb Where do you think he should be rated if rated "fairly"?
TL;RD - my guess is he's probably ranked fairly accurately as an about average #1C who's a reliable offensive contributor with less reliable overall game.
Now for the novel...
I mean he's been solid offensive contributor all through his career with some dips in overall play when Winnipeg seemed not a happy place. There's a bunch #1C whose production is in a completely different tier, obviously he's not gonna touch those guys, then there are a bunch of centers who produce roughly in the same ballpark, but some of those are way better all around players, like while I'm sure someone somewhere will be like Scheif >>>>> Barkov AINEC, I'm also sure there's not that many of those guys
Would you really rate him above Point, Aho, Miller, Crosby? All those guys have more points than him the last 5 seasons and all also have pretty balanced G+A totals, like Point and Aho actually have clearly more goals than him. Stamkos is also above him in points and goals for that stretch, but at this point I think we can say Scheif is better overall than him. But that still leaves guys like Eichel, Pettersson, Kopitar, J. Hughes and a bunch of others who might have less points than Scheif last 5 seasons but have good cases to be above him in ranking.
For me, that puts the top10 pretty much out his reach and he's left to battle it out with a bunch of other guys for (very) roughly top10-20. Isn't that where most people would rank him? Never know with people, but my guess is a consensus ranking would put him somewhere around top15, give or take a couple spots, which seems like "fair enough". Whether that means 12th best of 17th best, is it really a big difference? Heck, he might even fall outside top20 depending how much people value all situations play etc. and while I personally wouldn't probably agree with that, I also don't know even every #1C in the league all that well. I might be really sleeping on guys like Larkin, Thomas etc. and there's also Hintz, Suzuki etc. etc. Anyway, I think it's better to look at it as "tiers" and position within that tier being largely a matter of personal preference and bias.
Right now, he's having a great year but he's still being outproduced by his linemate and is shooting at 26%, which actually is not as ridiculously high as it sounds - his career average is over 17 and he's been above 20% before and anyone who has watched him play knows he's a great finisher who also scores most of his goals from very dangerous areas, so you expect him to have a high S% - just maybe not quite 26% high.
If he keeps this up until the end, it might be he has a good case for being a top5 center *this season*. Which would be great for him and the Jets, but he's 31, he's in the twilight years of his prime, not the beginning of it. It's just the team seems better than it has been in years, maybe ever during his career and he's having a great year. If he keeps playing like this, maybe he becomes a consensus top10 C again.
but seriously, appreciate how much time you put into your incredibly thorough answer.
