One of the bright spots for the Hurricanes this year has been Brandon Sutter's emergance as a shutdown defensive center but I still hear hockey pundits talk about how he has been a "disappointment." Whenever I hear that, I can't help but feel that these "experts" aren't watching the Hurricanes and are only looking at Sutter's 22 points in 54 games to judge his performance. What they don't see is all of the other contributions he makes to the team.
If you go by simple raw data, Sutter doesn't appear to be that impressive. He has only 12 goals, 22 points and a 44.6% scoring chance rate, but the truth is that Sutter has been one of the Canes most important players this year. Sutter's defensive game and responsibility has improved by a lot and you have to look deep into certain stats to see this.
We'll explore this more after the jump.
Every team needs a defensive unit that they can send out against opposing top lines and for the ...
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