NAS trades Seth Jones to CBS for Ryan Johansen

[pmrules]

Man I've been wanting Seth Jones for a long time to come to the Leafs.  I wanted to trade kessel for Jones almost 1.5 years ago...maybe more. Johanssen plays the more important position though, so, Nashville did well on this.

I don't know if #1 C is definitely more important than #1 D. It's pretty neck and neck I think.

Sorry I wasn't clear - I was talking about comparing a potential armchair GM Kessel for Jones deal from 1.5-2 years ago vs a Johansen for Jones deal today.  From Nashville's perspective, Johansen plays the more important position than Kessel, but they lost 2 years of Playoff Phil in my armchair scenario.  That too during Weber's prime years. 

 

[Kin]

Sorry I wasn't clear - I was talking about comparing a potential armchair GM Kessel for Jones deal from 1.5-2 years ago vs a Johansen for Jones deal today.  From Nashville's perspective, Johansen plays the more important position than Kessel, but they lost 2 years of Playoff Phil in my armchair scenario.  That too during Weber's prime years.

So when you said Nashville did well on this you meant in comparison to the hypothetical Phil Kessel trade?

Fair enough.

 

[GhostofPotvin29]

Man I've been wanting Seth Jones for a long time to come to the Leafs.  I wanted to trade kessel for Jones almost 1.5 years ago...maybe more. Johanssen plays the more important position though, so, Nashville did well on this.

I don't know if #1 C is definitely more important than #1 D. It's pretty neck and neck I think.

There has been some work done on trying to determine the impacts of F vs. D.  I recall Corey Pronman in his 2015 draft preview mentioning it as a reason why both Strome and Marner should be drafted ahead of Hanifin.  The full article is behind a paywall but this is part of it:

The even-strength effects of forwards are more pronounced at the top and bottom of performance levels than they are for defensemen. Good forwards elevate a team and bad ones crush a team, and the effect is more intense than that of their defensive counterparts.

This does not suggest that particular star defensemen don?t impact teams in a significant way -- Zdeno Chara, Drew Doughty and Erik Karlsson come to mind -- or that there are no black-hole defensemen in the NHL. But generally speaking, defensemen at the top of a team?s lineup impact their team much less than the top forwards on a team at even strength, and these differences remain even after adjusting for details like quality of competition and linemates.

http://espn.go.com/blog/nhl-draft/insider/post?id=744 (again, paywall)

 

[Kin]

Seems like limiting any such examination to even-strength situations would bias it towards forwards, given the D's relative importance on special teams.