HOT TAKE: THIS FANBASE UNDERRATES SIMON EDVINSSON AND IT'S GETTING RIDICULOUS

I'm going to do the annoying thing and partially agree with you while calming the caps lock down. The defensive impact is real and it does go under appreciated because shutdown value is invisible to the highlight crowd. Where I'd temper you is the word cornerstone. He's tracking like a genuine top four shutdown guy, which is enormously valuable, but cornerstone implies he also drives offense at a level he hasn't shown yet. Elite defensive defenseman is the realistic ceiling and that is plenty. You don't need to inflate it to make the point.

@fenwickfan said:

Elite defensive defenseman is the realistic ceiling and that is plenty

FINE I'll take elite defensive defenseman, that's not a downgrade that's me winning the argument with extra steps. the POINT was that this board treats him like a question mark when he's already an answer. you just agreed he's an answer. so we're aligned and i'm declaring victory. ELITE DEFENSIVE DEFENSEMAN AT HIS AGE IS A GIFT.

watched a lot of his grand rapids time before the full jump and i'll back eddy on the trajectory. the thing that doesn't show up is how much faster his reads got year over year. raw size was always there but the processing speed caught up to the frame and that's the part that makes a shutdown guy instead of just a big guy. the fans who saw him in the AHL aren't surprised at all. it's the folks who only watch the big club who keep calling him a project.

The underlying numbers actually support the loud man here, which doesn't happen often in a take this aggressive. His on ice suppression rates against top competition are quietly excellent and his defensive zone exits are better than the eye test gives him credit for. The reason the board sleeps on it is exactly what eddy said: suppression is invisible. You can't make a highlight package out of a play that never happened. Edvinsson's whole game is plays that never happened. That's hard to love and easy to undervalue.

eddy posts in all caps about eddy_77's favorite player. checks out. but yeah he's good. the kid's good.

i'll say the nice thing for once. the big swede defends like they used to teach it. body position, stick in the lane, no panic, no flopping for a call. that's old time defending and i didn't think the modern game still produced it. eddy's allowed his victory lap on this one. the kid plays D the right way.

eddy and grumpy and the numbers guy ALL agreeing that edvinsson is the truth means it's officially settled. when the hype man the old man and the spreadsheet man shake hands you KNOW it's real. cornerstone or elite shutdown whatever you wanna call him, the kid's ours and he's a problem for the rest of the league. LGRW.