Part VII in a Series
Not to rub salt in the wound of an already sour start to the season, but the Vancouver Canucks are really going to miss Quinn Hughes as he navigates his week-to-week injury.
That’s because Hughes, by our estimation, is the No. 1 puck moving defenseman in the NHL.
That much becomes clear when you peel back a layer on the onion and take a deeper dive into some of the advanced statistics, courtesy of Statthletes. Very few players have the puck on their stick more, or have a bigger impact on their team’s fortunes, than Hughes on a nightly basis. And in some cases, it is by a wide margin.
Consider: Hughes completed nearly 300 more passes (3,465) than the next closest player in the league last season (Victor Hedman, 3,185), according to Stathletes. That’s 300 more passes when the league average among 1,004 total players was just 776 total completed passes.
Not only that, but Hughes also had more defensive zone puck carries than any other blueliner, and ranked inside the top 10 in passes that led to zone exits, exit carries and stretch passes.
Quinn, 23, also posted a monster 68 points in 76 games in his 22-year-old season – but the Puck Moving Defenseman title is not about point production or offense, the latest in our series of Archetype Rankings, where we’re placing players throughout the league in different classification categories.
As a reminder: each player can only be classified into one ‘bucket,’ and three defensemen (Cale Makar, Victor Hedman and Roman Josi) were already part of the exclusive Franchise Player archetype category.
In this case, we defined a puck-moving defensemen – one of hockey’s great cliches – as one that either uses his skates or his stick to serve as the catalyst that allows his team to escape trouble and exit the defensive zone.
With that definition serving as our guiding light, and the help of five anonymous NHL front office executives, here are Daily Faceoff’s Top 20 projected Puck Moving Defensemen for the 2022-23 season, with their league-wide rank from last season in these categories:
| Rank | Player | Pos | Age | Team | Total Passes | Exit Pass | Stretch Pass | Exit Carry | DZ Carry |
| 1 | Quinn Hughes | LD | 23 | VAN | 1 | 7 | 3 | 7 | 1 |
| 2 | Rasmus Dahlin | LD | 22 | BUF | 14 | 10 | 7 | 10 | 4 |
| 3 | Miro Heiskanen | LD | 23 | DAL | 25 | 15 | 114 | 3 | 9 |
| 4 | Thomas Chabot | LD | 25 | OTT | 5 | 2 | 25 | 5 | 2 |
| 5 | Kris Letang | RD | 35 | PIT | 6 | 4 | 10 | 32 | 10 |
| 6 | Drew Doughty | RD | 32 | LAK | 2 | 3 | 46 | 11 | 7 |
| 7 | Zach Werenski | LD | 25 | CBJ | 12 | 16 | 38 | 6 | 5 |
| 8 | Adam Fox | RD | 24 | NYR | 7 | 22 | 11 | 35 | 33 |
| 9 | Shea Theodore | LD | 27 | VGK | 16 | 28 | 1 | 33 | 17 |
| 10 | Seth Jones | RD | 28 | CHI | 4 | 5 | 27 | 9 | 8 |
| 11 | Morgan Rielly | LD | 28 | TOR | 9 | 32 | 8 | 12 | 12 |
| 12 | Moritz Seider | RD | 21 | DET | 17 | 14 | 104 | 21 | 26 |
| 13 | John Carlson | RD | 32 | WSH | 11 | 12 | 65 | 36 | 22 |
| 14 | Mikhail Sergachev | LD | 24 | TBL | 32 | 17 | 14 | 45 | 20 |
| 15 | Brent Burns | RD | 37 | CAR | 27 | 39 | 6 | 64 | 13 |
| 16 | Erik Karlsson | RD | 32 | SJS | 26 | 88 | 81 | 1 | 18 |
| 17 | John Klingberg | RD | 30 | ANA | 22 | 30 | 21 | 4 | 15 |
| 18 | Cam Fowler | LD | 30 | ANA | 31 | 13 | 55 | 27 | 11 |
| 19 | Ivan Provorov | LD | 25 | PHI | 29 | 6 | 22 | 48 | 3 |
| 20 | Shayne Gostisbehere | LD | 29 | ARI | 18 | 19 | 32 | 20 | 21 |
LEGEND
Total Passes: NHL rank among defensemen in 2021-22 total completed passes per game.
Exit Pass: NHL rank among defensemen in 2021-22 in passes from the defensive zone in which the receiver was able to exit the zone.
Stretch Pass: NHL rank among defensemen in 2021-22 in passes from the defensive zone which traveled 50 or more feet to the neutral zone.
Exit Carry: NHL rank among defensemen in 2021-22 puck carries (at least six feet) in which the skater successfully exits the defensive zone into the neutral zone or offensive zone.
DZ Carry: NHL rank among defensemen in 2021-22 in total puck carries (at least six feet) in the defensive zone.
Under Consideration (in alphabetical order): Jonas Brodin, Noah Dobson, Mattias Ekholm, Noah Hanifin, Dougie Hamilton, Torey Krug, Charlie McAvoy, Alex Pietrangelo, Damon Severson, Devon Toews, Jacob Trouba.
Interestingly, the Top 20 was almost perfectly split between left (11) and right-shooting (9) blueliners. Most of the usual suspects, the exact players you’d think of when asked to come up with the top puck movers, were featured in the group. There were some tough calls as to whether someone so well-rounded like Charlie McAvoy belonged in either the puck moving or the shutdown bucket – and given McAvoy’s relative lack of offensive production compared to others in the group, and his stinginess standing up teams at the blue line, the decision was made a little clearer.
There were also a few surprises. Moritz Seider burst onto the scene with his Calder Trophy-winning rookie season. Cam Fowler slotted in quite well among an elite group, right below his team’s marquee offseason addition John Klingberg. We also learned that team structure and personnel can also heavily impact certain statistical categories – such as stretch pass, where two Vegas Golden Knights (Shea Theodore and Alex Pietrangelo) ranked one-two last season. Therefore, other players such as Miro Heiskanen and Seider, shouldn’t be dinged as heavily in the rankings because of their relative stretch pass rankings.
And perhaps most interestingly, these rankings may also provide a little preview for players who might be in demand as the season goes on – namely pending UFA Shayne Gostisbehere in Arizona, who enjoyed a strong bounce back season.
Daily Faceoff Archetype Rankings Series
Part I: Explainer / Franchise Players
Part II: Clutch
Part III: Distributors
Part IV: Shooter
Part V: Power Forward
Part VI: Net-Front Scorer
Part VII: Puck-Moving Defenseman
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Up Next: Shutdown Defensemen
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