Pietrangelo plays in the same defensive system with the same tough assignment, with less powerplay time and still produces elite offensive numbers.
The gap is widening...

Wait... you mean the same Pietrangelo's who's team is scoring 3.75 gf/g (2nd in the league) and who are operating with the 2nd best PP in the league (35.5%)? The same Pietrangelo that played for a team that scored 2.51 gf/g last year?

The Kings scored 2.29 gf/g and are sitting at 2.14 gf/g this year with an abysmal 10.8% pp conversion. Yea, that's sure comparable.

Must suck for AP having a fully healthy defensive lineup to spread the minutes around on as compared to Doughty who's lost half of the top 4 and the two most reliable d-men defensively.

pietrangelo played last season with a partner who is at best a number 5 defenceman and has split this year with a rookie and a vet who hasn't played in the nhl for years.

hey, if doughty is the most talented d-man in the league, the offence should run through him and the points should come. right?

I know doughty is a world class player, but enough excuses. fact is AP IS a better defenceman in all 3 zones and the gap IS widening. not entirely becasue of doughty's inability to raise his game, but also AP's growth into absolute studliness...

What does his partner have to do with the Kings missing half their top 4? I'm not posting here about quality of their d-partner, I'm making a point that due to injuries Doughty has been forced to take more heavy defensive responsibilities because there's less guys to spread it around to.

Since when does an offence run through the d-man, except maybe on the PP? Doesn't hurt that AP starts more shifts in the O-zone than Doughty either.

I'm not saying AP sucks. I'm not saying that Doughty has been better offensively this year than AP but the stats aren't showing it. I'm saying Doughty has a number of things in front of him that make it pretty damn hard for him to put up much in terms of offense and comparing his situation (Worse zone starts, heavy defensive minutes, lack of d-depth, ineffective PP, defensive system, poor offense, team shooting % of 7.6) to AP's (better zone starts, more d-depth, 2nd best PP in the league, 2nd highest scoring team in the league, team shooting % of 12) is pretty short-sighted.

except the fact that doughty hasn't put up numbers for three years. sutter hasn't even coached the kings for 60 games yet so there goes that theory. and doughty has had to play without mitchell for, what, seven games this year and a handful over the previous two seasons... does that really explain what is going on here for the better part of three seasons? the quality of competition and zone starts may marginally favour AP this year, all nine games of it, but if you look beyond this year, they both play the same role for their respective teams and the numbers are a lot closer than you make them out to be. both great players, but AP is clearly the better one right now in all aspects of the game.

Perhaps you are talking about regular season here, but let us not forget he was 5th overall in playoff points with 16 & +11 and 44 shots on net in 20 games. He was arguably one of Canada's top players in the Vancouver Games. I agree with Dyz as to why DD's stats are subpar thus far. Both AP and DD are elite defencemen in the league. There may be a gap in points thus far between the two, but I don't see this apparent "gap in talent level" from what i've watched thus far. I own one, and would love to own both, hands down.

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Points only keeper League, weekly head to head, 2RW, 2LW, 2C, 4D, 1 G , (goalies 2pts for W +3 for SO)



LW: Gaborik, Landeskog, Burrows

C: Seguin, Skinner, Berglund, Nyquist, Lombardi

RW: Eberle, Oshie, Doan, Silfverberg

D: Doughty, Carlson, Ekman-Larsson, Carle

G: Price , Schneider, Nabokov