KRIS LETANG - Defenseman - 32 - $7.25MM Cap Hit - UFA in 2022-2023
LAST UPDATED 8/20/19
Kris Letang is a difficult defenseman to get a read on. One minute I'll see him inside the top-10 of NHL Network's "Top 10 Defensemen" rankings, with the analysts praising his puck moving and prolific scoring numbers, and the other minute I'll see fans lamenting his lack of defensive skill and his challenges winning battles for pucks, calling him an incredibly overrated defenseman. I think that Letang is somewhere in between those two. Letang definitely is a little bit overrated. Or he perhaps just gets too much credit for the work he does. He's definitely an offensive asset, but I don't think that the fact that he plays with two of the game's best offensive talents in history in Evgeni Malkin and Sidney Crosby gets mentioned enough. He doesn't have nearly 500 points in only 747 NHL games without them. That being said, Letang is still an incredibly valuable defenseman on his own. His elite skating, puck skills, and on-ice vision makes him one of the game's most valuable transitional defensemen. His ability to move the puck also massively helps his defensive value, because where he can't quite win every board battle or muscle his way to pucks, he can be a huge help with zone exits and be the force that kills the opponent's possession in his end by carrying or passing the puck out of his zone. Letang's defense is legitimately underrated thanks to the still underrepresented value of defensive zone exits, but that'll turn around. Letang can kill penalties, facilitate the power play, and score like a top-6 winger. He's an elite puck moving defenseman, and would be a borderline #1 defenseman if he could stay healthy, but his lack of durability means he's more of a high-end #2 at this point. Still incredibly valuable, though.
Kris Letang is a difficult defenseman to get a read on. One minute I'll see him inside the top-10 of NHL Network's "Top 10 Defensemen" rankings, with the analysts praising his puck moving and prolific scoring numbers, and the other minute I'll see fans lamenting his lack of defensive skill and his challenges winning battles for pucks, calling him an incredibly overrated defenseman. I think that Letang is somewhere in between those two. Letang definitely is a little bit overrated. Or he perhaps just gets too much credit for the work he does. He's definitely an offensive asset, but I don't think that the fact that he plays with two of the game's best offensive talents in history in Evgeni Malkin and Sidney Crosby gets mentioned enough. He doesn't have nearly 500 points in only 747 NHL games without them. That being said, Letang is still an incredibly valuable defenseman on his own. His elite skating, puck skills, and on-ice vision makes him one of the game's most valuable transitional defensemen. His ability to move the puck also massively helps his defensive value, because where he can't quite win every board battle or muscle his way to pucks, he can be a huge help with zone exits and be the force that kills the opponent's possession in his end by carrying or passing the puck out of his zone. Letang's defense is legitimately underrated thanks to the still underrepresented value of defensive zone exits, but that'll turn around. Letang can kill penalties, facilitate the power play, and score like a top-6 winger. He's an elite puck moving defenseman, and would be a borderline #1 defenseman if he could stay healthy, but his lack of durability means he's more of a high-end #2 at this point. Still incredibly valuable, though.
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