Noon Number (November 22nd): 23

I'm not trying to knock Suter here at all. The guy is a beast and is certainly one of the best defencemen in the NHL, but as the undisputed #1 defenceman on this team, and the 2nd highest paid d-man in the league, his standards should be very very high. I don't think any Wild fan who has been watching all the games this year would say that Suter has hit his stride yet. He has been good, but not nearly as good as he can be. Everyone knows that when he's on his game, he just dominates the defensive zone, wins almost every 50-50 battle, picks out ridiculous passes that few others see and moves the puck up the ice with ease shift after shift.

Here's a quote from Dan Rosen's piece:

The Wild as a whole have been excellent in puck possession this year, limiting shots against and tilting the ice in their favour. Suter has been a big part of this, but it has very much been a group effort.

-Check out the puck possession numbers for all Wild defencemen:

Every d-man except for Brodin has a Corsi For% above 50% so far. Suter's 53.2% in 316.5 minutes is impressive, but so is Spurgeon's 56.2% in 221.2, and Scandella's 54.7% in 189.9. Stoner's numbers are very impressive, though he plays softer competition on the 3rd pairing.

-Moving away from shot attempts/puck possession numbers for a minute, let's look specifically at which Wild defencemen have been the most effective at limiting shots on goal against:

You can see from these numbers that Suter has done a good of limiting shots against, but his numbers don't exactly jump out from the list, which shows how good the whole defence has been this year.

-Here are the zone-start numbers for all Wild defencemen:

You can see from these numbers that Suter is getting a heavy percentage of offensive zone starts which, obviously, makes it easier to post a positive Corsi percentage and fewer shots against.

Spurgeon and Scandella both have a better CF% and SF% with fewer offensive zone starts, though Suter has played a lot more minutes.

-Suter's offensive skill is a big part of his game, so let's look at his scoring so far this year:

He hasn't scored a goal yet, but surely it's only a matter of time. He has a high numbers of secondary assists, which is a trend continuing from last year, and he is finding some success on the PP, which is an area where he plays a lot of minutes.

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