Senor Catface
Registered User
- Jul 25, 2006
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Avalanche fans seeing someone dare start a Hughes topic.
Quinn Hughes is having a Hart caliber season
- Thread starter LemonSauceD
- Start date
- Dec 2, 2007
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Goals > Assists, Hughes needs to have a 5-10 pt scoring lead to have the offensive angle. There's the team quality argument, sure, but Makar can't control who he plays with and if you've watched the Avs you would recognize Makar isn't a product nor the beneficiary of his team. He drives the points he earns typically. Also Makar is in a colder streak, he and Hughes have traded hot and cold throughout the season. Curious to see if Cale re-extends his lead soon.
I also strongly disagree with people who think their player would linearly improve if they switched places with another on another team. It's completely ignoring puck possession dynamics. Hughes on the Avs would be contending with MacK for puck control and it could hurt him just as much as help. I personally think Makar loses points because of MacK carrying the play more, when Makar is more than capable.
Competition on the other hand can be controlled. If your coach doesn't trust you against the other team's best, can you really be considered the best? PK I'm a bit more forgiving on because I understand the strategic value, but ES there's really no forgiveness. Beat the best to be the best.
And yeah, total points matter beyond pace for trophies. No one wins the Norris off pace at the end of the year, or Makar would have 3? Of them by then.
Anyways... Enjoy the Hart chatter. I got caught down a rabbit hole of questions related to Norris talk. Not my intention.
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I think you will be disappointed. Werenski and a healthy hughes are both having better seasons.
- Oct 13, 2018
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Makar is way worse when MacKinnon isn't on the ice, his 5v5 corsi, fenwick, and expected stats are all between 40-44%, while the Avalanche when neither of them are on the ice is ~50%
This is biggest argument for Hughes and against Makar, with a bullet.
Makar's impact craters without Mackinnon on the ice. While Hughes drives the entire Canucks roster.
Makar feasts on the environment his elite teammates create. Hughes is the only player on Vancouver capable of creating a winning environment.
- Oct 13, 2018
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Yep, Hughes is closer to MacKinnon than Makar at this point.
Joe Rogan
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- Jun 21, 2019
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Makar is absolutely a beneficiary of his environment, if you argue that doesn't play a factor you are delusional. If Hughes was on Edmonton's powerplay with Mcdavid and Draisaitl, he'd have 60 pts on the season already. The fact he is leading his team in scoring by 17 pts is ridiculous
Colorado has the better team, but let's not pretend like the Canucks are bottom feeders either. This is by and large the same team that won the Pacific last year and went to game seven against Edmonton without their Vezina finalist goalie.
- Oct 13, 2018
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That is not the case this year, Hughes is the only thing keeping them from being a bottom feeder
PS the Canucks without Hughes is on the chart too but they're so low you have to click on the tweet to see them
Else Ermine
Registered User
- Jun 1, 2024
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I'm a Canucks fan that often watches them play on the other team's feed, and yeah, every single one of them gives Hughes constant attention and praise on their broadcast. He's probably the poster boy for players that are being talked about enough.
I think the Norris really helped that along. It's an easy story for away team broadcasters to talk about when playing the Canucks, so they do a bit of homework and watch him under a microscope for something to talk about at the intermission, and now the out of market media is really realizing like "holy shit, he does absolutely everything in every zone for the Canucks".
kanucks25
Chris Tanev #1 Fan
People who are citing PK numbers and whatnot I think simply cannot grasp simple value concepts.
Why would you play Hughes on the PK when you have literal specialists to do that instead? Should he be playing 35 minutes instead of 30 every game? Because otherwise if you cut some of his other minutes to play him on the PK that's going to make the team worse overall.
The fact is Hughes literally carries the Canucks 5on5, which means you save his minutes for that instead of playing him on the PK where you can have bottom pairing shot blockers do it instead.
Does that mean Hughes can't PK? No, it just makes zero sense to use him in that role given the team's composition.
Then you add the fact that Hughes has no teammates in the top 50 in points per game. He has like no help, he has to literally do everything for the Canucks to have a chance to win.
When you think of players who have to literally do everything to carry the team that's not Makar, that's not McDavid or Drai, that's more like Kaprizov or even Marner (this season). Look at any metric that shows what the Canucks are with and without Hughes on the ice. It shouldn't be difficult to understand when you do that unless you are being willfully ignorant or perhaps naturally ignorant beyond your control.
Why would you play Hughes on the PK when you have literal specialists to do that instead? Should he be playing 35 minutes instead of 30 every game? Because otherwise if you cut some of his other minutes to play him on the PK that's going to make the team worse overall.
The fact is Hughes literally carries the Canucks 5on5, which means you save his minutes for that instead of playing him on the PK where you can have bottom pairing shot blockers do it instead.
Does that mean Hughes can't PK? No, it just makes zero sense to use him in that role given the team's composition.
Then you add the fact that Hughes has no teammates in the top 50 in points per game. He has like no help, he has to literally do everything for the Canucks to have a chance to win.
When you think of players who have to literally do everything to carry the team that's not Makar, that's not McDavid or Drai, that's more like Kaprizov or even Marner (this season). Look at any metric that shows what the Canucks are with and without Hughes on the ice. It shouldn't be difficult to understand when you do that unless you are being willfully ignorant or perhaps naturally ignorant beyond your control.
Nobody looks at the roster and thinks it's shitty.We have a great group of forwards with four capable of 30 plus and 2 with 100 point season. goaltending when fully healthy is the best tandem in the game but the only three good dmen we have are Quinn, Hronek and Myers, the rest have all played like #6-7's all year and of the three Hronek has been gone for 20+ games.
Oddly enough though despite too many bad games of getting hemmed in. They allow very few shots pg and aside from a few blowout losses by mainly Silovs, we don't give up many goals and tbf they've looked pretty good the last handful of games.
Not enough puck moving is the thing that needs to be fixed if we want to play meaningful hockey and while internally adding Hronek and likely Willander should help a ton, the 2LHD spot has to be upgraded. Soucy has been the biggest culprit and issue especially since he's expected to be an average to good top four guy and while playing with Hughes obviously helps, Myers looks night and day away from Soucy, despite tougher matchups.
LuckyDay
Registered User
so you are saying Hughes > Makar?
Also, according to another thread, the best defenseman on the Canucks is Hutson.
With Soucy falling of a cliff, Forbert mostly hurt and no Hronek there's been some rough nights but it disingenuous to assess the team without recognizing everything this team has gone through.When i suggested after the playoffs last year that the canucks would take a step back after losing a few D-men i was ripped to shreds, then this year they ice this line up.
as for Makar, MacK has like 11 EN points, so its an inflated lead, also scoring is up as a whole with EN's because teams are pulling goalies with like 4-5 minutes left. Its skewing stats.
Let's take your #1 goalie for 30ish games, Your #2 Dman, lengthy absences from four of your top four players and the oilers would be DOA. While I don't usually use injuries when a player still plays, JT and EP were not 100% the first 10ish games and in EP'S case basically all year until the last two games basically.
As for Quinn, no player is as important to his team except probably Kaprizov and for the last two years has been the best Dman.
If the nucks end up finishing top 3 in the Pacific and he continues to have such massive offensive and defensive discrepancies compared to the rest of the team he should absolutely be a finalist for the Hart.
I personally think the teams best players will snap out of this funk so I doubt the numbers will be so far apart by the end of the he year and Kap will win it.
The only reason the Canucks finished as high as they did in the standings is because they were near-historic PDO merchants for the first 50 games.
They only reason they went 7 games with EDM is because Skinner went into sieve mode, and even then he still won.
The Canucks without Hughes on the ice literally perform like a Sharks/Hawks-esque team. It is literally only Hughes that solely drags them up into relative competence.
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wintersej
Registered User
Even if you go back several years, Miller and Pettersson are far less effective without Hughes on the ice. I've been slow to come around on Hughes, but he is one of the handful of best players in the game.
Does give me a little pause about how to rate Miller and Pettersson, though, when trying to come up with trade values. Their results are straight mediocre without Hughes on the ice.
Does give me a little pause about how to rate Miller and Pettersson, though, when trying to come up with trade values. Their results are straight mediocre without Hughes on the ice.
- Oct 13, 2018
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I do think the numbers look worse in part because the team has better forward depth than defensive depth. In particular the Garland-Joshua line last year had really strong possession numbers and they rarely played with Miller and Pettersson. Miller also hasn’t been himself this year and had a bad start under Boudreau in 22-23. Pettersson hasn’t been himself since February last year. When on they can carry a line, but they’re not as consistent as you’d like. And the team’s lack of puck movers beyond Quinn is a problem. I don’t think they need Hughes to be elite, they just need to play like they can. But Hughes will rarely not be a possession monster consistently.
LuckyDay
Registered User
One interesting factor is how much better Myers is on Hughes line since he's moved to the top D core. Anyone on Hughes line benefits but Myers, size, reach, stride, and shot complement Hughes like Joshua complements Garland or Bertuzzi's size with Naslund.
Hughes has always been a great player in transition and as such a strong possession player, but it didn’t always lead to production 5v5. But since the start of last year he’s really learned how to use his skating to back players off and create space and passing/shooting lanes in the offensive zone, and he’s taken it up another notch this year. It’s like having a Patty Kane on defense.
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Oilslick941611
Registered User
another point i'd like to add thats mostly neutral but probably a common thread among western canadian hockey fans....
Its funny the meda obviously doesn't stay up and watch the western teams. They and the great players out west only get hyped and talked about after a road trip through Toronto.
Its funny the meda obviously doesn't stay up and watch the western teams. They and the great players out west only get hyped and talked about after a road trip through Toronto.
MXD
Partying Hard
- Oct 27, 2005
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...WTF, those guys played a cumulative amount of roughly 5000 NHL games, all of them except Bouillon and Weinrich were in their primes, and Weinrich would go on to play 21+ minutes for a few seasons for rather good teams up until the lockout.
I think the discussion here is Hart, not Norris......which I'd suggest Hughes is definitely more deserving for than Makar.....Norris might be closer though.
In terms of voter faigue, that wouldn't benefit Makar at all....in fact, the opposite as he's the only player that's been a finalist for the award in each of the last 4 seasons. Hughes won it last year, but has never been top 8 before that.
Voter fatigue is when someone has just won the award, and so you give it to someone else the next year because usually unless if he topped that last years performance its not as impressive.
It has nothing to do with Makar. Its a negative to the one who won it most recently.
Last time someone won a Norris back to back was Lidstrom in 06-09.
