stempniaksen
Registered User
- Oct 12, 2008
- 11,043
- 4,613
EK will (and should) be dinged for his relatively short peak but at his best I truly think he impacted the game more than any defenceman in recent memory. He arguably had a couple of short peaks where he was being talked about with the best of the best.
Makar is absolutely incredible, his highs are almost equally as high, his lows are higher and he's showing he can do it more consistently than EK. I have no issue with someone being swayed by all this this and saying the answer is "easily" Makar but the tippy top of Karlsson's game was special.
And just to add that Karlsson never gets the praise he deserved for being an elite transition defender. Yes, he could get bullied in front of the net and people automatically saw that and called him bad defensively. And I'm not even here to suggest that he wasn't guilty of it at times whether due to injury or indifference. But peak EK was the best transition defender in the league, had one of the better active sticks in the D zone in the league and showed an ability to change his game multiple times in his career, no season more obvious than when he led the league in blocked shots under Guy Boucher. The guy was capable of doing almost anything the team asked of him, when he was with the Senators his task was largely to run the whole offence and defence was secondary. At the international level when he's been surrounded by proven talent he's always been a well above average to elite defender.
Makar is absolutely incredible, his highs are almost equally as high, his lows are higher and he's showing he can do it more consistently than EK. I have no issue with someone being swayed by all this this and saying the answer is "easily" Makar but the tippy top of Karlsson's game was special.
And just to add that Karlsson never gets the praise he deserved for being an elite transition defender. Yes, he could get bullied in front of the net and people automatically saw that and called him bad defensively. And I'm not even here to suggest that he wasn't guilty of it at times whether due to injury or indifference. But peak EK was the best transition defender in the league, had one of the better active sticks in the D zone in the league and showed an ability to change his game multiple times in his career, no season more obvious than when he led the league in blocked shots under Guy Boucher. The guy was capable of doing almost anything the team asked of him, when he was with the Senators his task was largely to run the whole offence and defence was secondary. At the international level when he's been surrounded by proven talent he's always been a well above average to elite defender.
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