Why Their Defense Doesn't Matter for Patrick Kane and Alex Ovechkin

Let's for a moment look at the bodies of work for two anonymous players in the NHL.

(The headline is sort of a giveaway, but let's do this anyway.)

Player A plays on his off-side wing and is known entirely for his offense. In 552 career games, he has 196 goals and 533 points, about 0.97 points per game. No one should use plus/minus to judge a player, even though it happens, but for his career, he is plus-52. Only 22.2 percent of his faceoffs occur in the defensive zone, fourth-lowest among his team's forwards.

Player B plays on his offside wing and is known entirely for his offense. In 715 career games, he has 439 goals and 834 points, about 1.17 points per game. No one should use plus/minus to judge a player, even though it happens, but for his career, he is plus-54. About 27.5 percent of his faceoffs occur in the defensive zone, about middle of the pack for his team.

Neither player is part of the penalty-killing unit. 

Which NHL general manager wouldn't throw millions of dollars at these players to acquire their services?

Since this isn't very cleverly disguised, you've probably figured that Player A is Patrick Kane and Player B is Alex Ovechkin, perhaps the two biggest stars involved in the 2015 Winter Classic set to be played at Nationals Park Thursday afternoon. Kane and Ovechkin have different skill sets, but they are two of the sport's most gifted offensive players.

Yet every year, almost as if an alarm goes off in the home of hockey writers, someone needs to write a piece about how Ovechkin needs to do more defensively. They wait for that first minus-four game of the season and pounce. This is also an annual occurrence despite Ovechkin having the 15th-best points-per-game mark in the history of the league.

Kane, meanwhile, is nowhere near as prolific as Ovechkin yet doesn't catch anywhere near as much flak for his deficiencies in this area. Ask a couple Blackhawks beat writers about Kane's defense, and they'll you it's not good, but that it has improved in recent years.

I'd like to posit a controversial theory that could take the hockey world by storm.

Ovechkin and Kane...gulp...are so good offensively that they don't need to play at Selke-caliber levels to be effective "two-way," players and any criticism in this regard is silly.

Neither player, at least not while they are at the peaks of their offensive powers, should ever have to answer for that side of their games.

We've all seen the admittedly hilarious GIFs of Ovechkin gliding through his own zone, looking like someone playing a video game dropped their controller. There's no defending those specific instances of outright carelessness, but has anyone noticed how much Ovechkin produces offensively compared to his teammates and others in the league?

With new coach Barry Trotz, Ovechkin has been a five-on-five dynamo this season. His Fenwick rests at 54.6 percent and his Fenwick-close is 54.8 percent, according to stats.hockeyanalysis.com. It's fair if you are experiencing Fancy Stats Fatigue these days, but those numbers simply mean that when Ovechkin is on the ice at five-on-five, the puck is spending way more time in the attacking zone than the defensive zone.

Kane, meanwhile, is also a solid five-on-five player but isn't having the same season as Ovechkin. Kane's Fenwick is 52.7 percent, a fine-looking number on the surface that is actually quite poor compared to his teammates. The Blackhawks are a dominant possession team, so relative to the the rest of the Blackhawks, Kane isn't getting it done at the same level as Ovechkin.

It sure is interesting how Ovechkin seems to have a target on his back and Kane avoids that scrutiny for the most part, but that's another column for another day.

Either way, when you pair those possession numbers with the offensive numbers of Ovechkin (17 goals, 30 points) and Kane (18 goals, 40 points), you take them and laugh all the way to the playoffs.

Sometimes, the best defense is a good offense.

Maybe you're argument is, "But imagine how much more those guys could do if they cared more about defense." Come on. How much more do you want from these guys? And how do you know if Ovechkin adopted a checking-line mentality it wouldn't affect his offense?

Do you want Kane to tell Jonathan Toews and Marian Hossa, "I know you two play an excellent 200-foot game and I'm usually on the ice with one of you, but how about I live below the faceoff dots in our zone too?"

Hockey is a weird sport in that people are always looking to tear down its stars over mostly insignificant things. It's not to say playing defense isn't significant, but there's nothing about the games of Kane and especially Ovechkin that warrants such microscopic analysis.

Two of the best in the world will be on display on New Year's Day. Focus on all the great things they do, not the things you don't think they do.

All statistics via NHL.com and Stats.HockeyAnalysis.com.

Dave Lozo covers the NHL for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter: @DaveLozo.