Potvin29 said:
CarltonTheBear said:
How do people define how many dimensions a player has? Is it just offence and defence? In that case a large amount of the league, even those players who are getting paid big bucks, are only one dimensional players. What separates everyone is just how good they are at their specific dimension. And Kessel is damn-good at his.
I never hear guys like Polak (to pick a quick example) called "one-dimensional" - for them it's all about their character, etc even though their one dimension is that they're supposedly strong defensively. But the vast majority of the league is one-dimensional by and large.
Don't even get me started on Bernier. He's all goaltending and nothing else.
It's an interesting question. Kessel is considered one-dimensional because most of what he does is on the offensive side of the puck, and he takes a lot of crap because he doesn't excel on defence. If he hustled back, stopped cheating and played solid defence, that would make him a more complete player, but that would probably come at a cost in terms of production. So, would you rather see him as a one-dimensional player scoring 40 goals/year, or would scoring 20 goals/year and playing great defence (being a complete player) make him more palatable? I don't think he wins in either situation.
I heard someone talking about J. Toews this morning (another player??), saying he's likely a 40-goal scorer, and fairly easily if he were to cheat on his defensive duties. But he won't do it. So he gets labeled as a complete player, but you could make an argument that he's not living up to his offensive potential.