Puck Lists: Ranking the World Cup's No. 1 defensemen
(This is PUCK LISTS, a Tuesday series from yer boy RL, in which he arbitrarily lists hockey things.)
With the World Cup officially under way, we’re getting a good look at how things are going through four or five games with each of these teams. The thing that’s always interesting in best-on-best tournaments is to see how coaches evaluate the elite of the elite, and how they deploy them as a consequence.
Just as last week saw a ranking of each World Cup team’s centers, it’s interesting to see which defensemen teams rely on the most. Based on total ice time in the exhibition portion of the tournament, as well as the first two days of round robin play, we’re starting to get a pretty good idea of who coaches will be putting out for the most minutes against top competition.
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And the field is, well, let’s say, varied. Canada and Sweden have such great embarrassments of riches that any of their top-three defensemen would probably beat out the guys below them on the list. (Not to mention one of the guys Canada just decided to leave at home ha ha ha.) With that in mind, let’s rank all the No. 1 D in the tournament:
8. Nikita Zaitsev, Russia
Frankly it’s hard to have much of an opinion on a player whose North American exposure has been limited to two World Junior appearances (zero points in 12 games, five years ago), a few World Cup exhibitions and then one game against Sweden in which he was admittedly pretty good. He was, however, quite bad in Russia’s exhibition slate. So really, it’s hard to guess what all that means.
Even if you watch a lot of KHL games and have a more nuanced opinion of his game, history proves that it’s very easy to misread KHL performance as it relates to NHL quality.
The Toronto Maple Leafs signed him this summer and they seem to like him, but it’s just impossible to guess where he actually slots into a good NHL team’s defense. One imagines Mike Babcock can get a lot out of him, but for right now he’s very much an unknown quantity.
7. Jakub Nakladal, Czech Republic
Nakladal was pretty impressive in a short stint with the Calgary Flames last season. He was a decent No. 4-5 defenseman, and that’s pretty much all he is ever going to be given that he’ll be 29 in December.
And that he’s a national team’s No. 1 defenseman also tells you a lot about that team’s quality. He’s competing for that spot with Michal Kempny, a 26-year-old who will join the Chicago organization this year. But Kempny got exposed badly against Canada and seemed to fall out of favor with the coaching staff mid-game.
Nakladal, by the way, has yet to re-up with Calgary or anyone else, and is an unrestricted free agent. Maybe he was hoping a good World Cup would boost his chances of getting a contract on middling term, and perhaps it will. He was one of the best Czech players in the opening game, which I know isn’t saying much.
6. Rasmus Ristolainen, Finland
People in Buffalo inexplicably love him, but he’s no great shakes in point of fact. He was a little subpar in the pre-tournament and got caved in by North America in the next game (20.9 percent score-adjusted possession).
The Finnish team in general didn’t have a good outing, to be fair. They had no answer for the North American speed or forecheck, and often it was Ristolainen who got stuck in his own end. While there, he made a few solid defensive plays, but you’d rather not have to do that in the first place, right?
Maybe he goes on to develop into the No. 1 Sabres fans expect, but his NHL and World Cup play don’t exactly portend a good outcome there.
5. Aaron Ekblad, Team North America
Ekblad should perhaps be a little higher on the list based on his first two seasons in the NHL, but we’re getting to the part of the rankings where you’d kill to have any of the top-five on your team.
Now that Ekblad’s going to be spending a lot more of his time apart from Brian Campbell, though, it’s tough to guess how things will go for him either in this tournament or over the course of the regular season.
The good news is the possession numbers have really been there so far, and the team has scored in bunches with Ekblad on the ice (doesn’t hurt that he’s sharing a lot of time with this McDavid kid out of Edmonton). Playing with a bunch of elite young players really seems to have everyone on the team going, but Ekblad in particular seems to be a beneficiary of that quality as well as his own prodigious talent level.
4. Ryan Suter, United States
Suter is still a pretty damn good defenseman after all these years, even if you have to say he’s hindered by the team around him and the guy behind the bench.
The fact that he’s going to get rolled out there against the very best other teams have to offer, but then also have guys like Justin Abdelkader and Brandon Dubinsky in the shutdown roles in front of him is a significant handicap. He’s still going to devour minutes — he played almost 22:30 in the loss to Team Europe — but he’s going to do it in his own end through no fault of his own.
What I’m really excited for is to see how he’ll do with Minnesota now that Bruce Boudreau is his coach.
3. Roman Josi, Team Europe
Josi’s really good but pulled a bit of a thankless task. His situation might be a little more dire than Suter’s, because you look at the D talent behind him and get really worried. Zdeno Chara is his No. 2, and he now finally looks every bit of his 78 years. After that it’s Andrej Sekera (who’s fine) and Dennis Seidenberg (who’s very much not).
The good news for Josi is that he’s probably going to spend a lot of his ice time in the NHL playing behind Ryan Johansen, and next to P.K. Subban. The better news for him more immediately is that he and Anze Kopitar are basically going to be inseparable in this tournament, and get a lot of minutes to boot.
2. Drew Doughty, Canada
For all the stick Doughty gets from certain members of the hockey media, his quality is still tremendous overall. He’ll look even better considering he gets to play for Canada and will spend much of his game standing at the blue line waiting for Sidney Crosby to outlet it to him while Carey Price finishes another sudoku puzzle.
Did Doughty deserve the Norris? You know in your heart of hearts that he didn’t. Is he still one of the two or three best defensemen alive? Sure he is. He’ll show it in this tournament, too, because Canada lets everyone thrive.
1. Erik Karlsson, Sweden
Erik Karlsson is the best defenseman on a team with like 40 world-class defensemen. That’s because he’s the best in the world. Not too hard to figure out.
Ryan Lambert is a Puck Daddy columnist. His email is here and his Twitter is here.
