Friday Morning Skate: What Does Top 6 Even Mean Anyways (This Time With Feeling)

Yesterday I posted a half-written thing about what "Top 6" means. Today I plan to finish that thought. There are a couple of things to look at for what makes a Top 6 Forward (T6F): Scoring, Time on Ice, Corsi (relative or relQOC or what-have-you), etc. We'll use behindthenet.ca to get stats and use the same as before: establish a measuring stick by who the 180th-best forward is at that stat and then see which Bruins are better than them at that. We'll cut out any players who didn't play at least 40 games.

All stats are 5v5.

Points/60

Scoring is important for a T6F, right? So let's get right to points per 60 minutes of playing time. The cutoff is Mikko Koivu at 1.58 p/60. The most surprising thing about P/60 that I found: Teddy Purcell and Pavel Datsyuk have identical p/60

2012 Bruins T6Fs by P/60: (10 Total) Tyler Seguin, Milan Lucic, Rich Peverley, Brad Marchand, Patrice Bergeron, David Krejci, Nathan Horton, Benoit Pouliot, Chris Kelly, Jordan Caron.

TOI/60

T6Fs are on-ice a lot. TOI/60 tells us just how much. The cutoff is David Booth with 12.78 minutes on-ice 5v5 per 60 minutes of 5v5 play his team plays. The top 10 of these guys includes 3 guys who aren't considered T6Fs in the previous category. Of note, former fan favorite Blake Wheeler comes in at 12th on this list.

2012 Bruins T6Fs by TOI/60: (Go figure, 6 total) David Krejci, Milan Lucic, Tyler Seguin, Brad Marchand, Patrice Bergeron, Nathan Horton

CorsiRelQoC

BehindTheNet.ca defines this as:

Average Relative Corsi of opposing players, weighted by head-to-head ice time.

This stat is useful because it gives you an idea of who gets played against tough competition most often. On a bad team like the Flames, Jarome Iginla and his two linemates Olli Jokinen and Curtis Glencross are all top-10. Probably because they play against top competition all of the time. The 180th-best is Antoine Vermette with 0.398.

2012 Bruins T6Fs by CorsiRelQoC: Brad Marchand, Patrice Bergeron, Rich Peverley, Milan Lucic, Brian Rolston

Point Shares

Hockey-Reference.com decided to come up with their own stat (similar to GVT) that attempts to figure out how much each player contributes, measured by standings points. It's not an immediately wrong list, as the top 5 from 2012 seem like the right people. Noted Phoenix Coyotes holdout Kyle Turris is 180th with 3.2 point shares.

2012 Bruins T6Fs by PS: Tyler Seguin, Patrice Bergeron, Brad Marchand, Milan Lucic, David Krejci, Chris Kelly, Rich Peverley, Benoit Pouliot, Nathan Horton.

So I suppose I should have some kind of conclusion here. Let's just look at which Bruins fit onto all of the lists.

Bruins Top 6 Forwards

Made every list: Brad Marchand, Patrice Bergeron, Milan Lucic

Made every list but CorsiRelQoC: David Krejci, Nathan Horton, Tyler Seguin

Made every list but the CorsiRelQoC and TOI/60: Rich Peverley, Chris Kelly, Benoit Pouliot

I don't really have anything else so here's the highlight reel for the 2011-2012 South Carolina Stingrays:

Oh and speaking of top forwards, Alex Semin signed for a year with the Carolina Hurricanes and their PP is going to be hilariously good.