Kris Letang’s Correct Comparable (Aspirationally)=Chris Pronger

When the NHL suspended Kris Letang for 2 games for a hit from behind on Winnipeg Jet Alex Burmistrov, Hockey Consultant couldn't get a phrase out of her mind. Actually, when it comes to Letang—a player Hockey Consultant followed closely for years before he became an NHL mainstay—the suspension brought to mind a long-held belief about the defenseman who Hockey Consultant has long believed is the closest comparable—aspirationally— for Letang.

Chris Pronger.

Pronger's suspension history is here.

But you'll also want to take a look at Pronger's career playoff statistics. If the average TOI numbers don't say this clearly enough, and if the amount of time spent on the power play, killing penalties, and generally being on the ice more than any other player don't say this either, let Hockey Consultant spell it out, quickly: The eighth-seeded 2005-06 Edmonton Oilers don't advance to the Cup Finals without Chris Pronger on the roster. The 2009-10 Philadelphia Flyers don't get to the Finals sans Pronger, either, and that annoying one game suspension in the 2007 playoffs aside, the Ducks don't win the Cup in 2007 without Pronger.

An in-his-prime Chris Pronger is a dominant franchise defenseman, one who can dictate the pace of a hockey game with controlled, aggressive, physical play (including, of course, shooting, skating, stickhandling, and yes, hitting) in all three zones of the ice.

Throughout his career, Kris Letang has—quite hyperbolically, in Hockey Consultant's view, and she admits to believing the kid was going to be a star before he'd even cemented a permanent place on the NHL roster (and would defend herself by noting NHL luminaries such as Paul Coffey and Scott Bowman did the same at a later point)—been compared to players like Paul Coffey and Nicklas Lidstrom. Given some of Letang's easy-on-the-eyes skills in terms of skating and silky soft shootout hands, it's easy to see how those comparisons might happen, but the comparisons to those players are fundamentally wrong.

Paul Coffey played in the late eighties. He always had the puck on his stick, and no one could catch him. Teams didn't use video and shot blocking as systems the way they do now. While Coffey once broke his jaw blocking a shot with his face in the playoffs, Coffey did not play an era where he was required to do what the modern, tight-checking, systematized NHL requires defensemen to do. (Simply put, there is too much strength and too many systems for the wide-open style played in the eighties and early nineties when Coffey was dominating.) Nor is Nick Lidstrom a good comparison for Letang. Lidstrom, fundamentally, is ridiculously poised and positionally sound. And while Letang does have offensive skills and has learned a lot about defensive positioning, he's not an offense-only guy in today's NHL, or purely a "mobile and minute-munching" defenseman.

Like Chris Pronger, Kris Letang is a physical hockey player who plays aggressively. Like Pronger in his prime, when Letang is "on", he's playing with incredibly controlled aggression, perhaps best called "aggressive poise". When Letang is "off"—and he's off too much for the liking of Pittsburgh fans who have seen him dominate games and expect and believe he can and should do that night after night—he is either far too tentative (seen in early years), or, more recently, his aggression is less controlled, and that unharnessed aggression can result in awful-looking mistakes (things like a giveaway, or a physical defensive error, or well, not letting up on a check when—as another Brendan Shanahan video shows—he clearly knows how to do the right thing.)

Fundamentally, Chris Pronger is the correct aspirational comparable for Kris Letang.

A smaller version of Pronger, yes. A faster version of Pronger, hopefully.

But a physical defenseman who can make the great offensive plays and also make great positional defensive choices, when on, but, whose entire game, when on, is undergirded with an aggressive edge that enables him to dictate the flow of the game on the ice.

Hockey Consultant believes that Letang's learned a lot, and she hopes he'll "take his medicine" from the VP of Player Safety and not stop hitting but take the suspension as a lesson in controlling his emotions and harnessing his aggression appropriately.

But here's the thing about aggressive hockey players, or, more specifically, aggressive hockey players with the physical skills to be franchise defensemen.

You need to control the game 200 feet to 200 feet while playing half the game, and more than half the game if you are in a playoff overtime game? You need to play how Letang played against the Edmonton Oilers the opening road trip of the 2011-12 season, making a marvelous defensive play and quickly converting it to offense, and you need to do that shift after shift after shit? You need to set a tone for a period or a game for your team with a check or a hit? You need to control the entire flow of a game, end-to-end, like a general commands his troops?

If you're a physical player—not a smooth-skating guy who doesn't spend any time in his zone and you play your best defense when you get to pick in the moment if you'll use only your stick, or just sound position, or a legal hit, or some combination thereof, to make the right situational play—you have to play with aggression.

And your aggression—because of how your skill set wires you to play hockey—brings with it way more good than bad.

So Letang's best upside—and please note, we're talking upside here, Hockey Consultant IS ABSOLUTELY NOT saying Letang is anywhere near the level Pronger has reached in his career—is, stylistically, to be a smaller, hopefully faster version of Chris Pronger in his prime.

And do you know the one word that best described Chris Pronger?

"Nasty."

Nasty good. Nasty to play against. And, occasionally, even when he was doing far more good than harm in a playoff run to a championship, nasty in terms of being physically tough on the opposition to the point of being disciplined by an NHL that often failed to suspend star players.

Call Hockey Consultant crazy, but a part of her is relieved to see Kris Letang get suspended. Because it confirms something she's always suspected. That he's not going to be some very lite version of a smooth skating Paul Coffey or a positionally perfect Nicklas Lidstrom. But that he could be different than those players. He could use his own skill set, not exactly the same as theirs, and harness his aggression to play well against the strong, fast, and young players populating the NHL today.

Letang wouldn't be Chris Pronger lite, either. But Letang could be—and Hockey Consultant would argue—he is also wired to be— like Chris Pronger.

Go ahead and ask any NHL GM or Coach who wanted to win a championship: If having Pronger commandeer the ice during playoff game meant they occasionally had to live through a few too many minor penalties, coach him to learn to control his aggression, and well, remind him to play with a CONTROLLED, aggressive edge—they would moan and mutter and complain as they'd accompany him to a discipline hearing or two and remind him to control his snarl in highly critical moments, but they'd do it, honestly, if secretly, with a smirk that they were glad Pronger was on their side and not another team's.

Letang, a one-time All-Star who played important but protected minutes on a Cup champion team at age 22, still has a long way to go to have a career that is anything close to Pronger's. But, in Hockey Consultant's view, his play shows a couple of things: Like Pronger, the league tells him to stop it. Because, well, All-Stars and franchise defenseman don't need to make borderline/illegal hits to play hockey. And it's true—they don't.

But that fine line?

That nasty edge?

Defenseman in the mold of Pronger and Letang play the game best with a controlled snarl. So if a suspension teaches Letang (who has seemed, in other areas, to be receptive to instruction, albeit it may not happen as quickly as most fans would prefer) that his snarl is fine and quite necessary, but to control his snarl appropriately, well….

Look out, NHL, and not for more "fine lines" (though Hockey Consultant knows too well they happen with aggressive players and it's constantly checking in to keep human beings, all of whom have emotions, appropriately in line). Look out for the kind of nasty, franchise defenseman, 28 playoff games out of 28 playoff games, you dread playing against while secretly wishing that aforementioned nasty player were on your side.

And look out for someone other than Hockey Consultant to realize that, perhaps, it's not hyperbole to describe the style of game Kris Letang plays at his best as eerily similar—stylistically, anyway—to the way hockey has been played, excellently, for years, by that so nasty good defenseman, Chris Pronger.