Tyson Barrie Has Become an Elite Offensive Defenceman for the Colorado Avalanche

Of the NHL’s top offensive defencemen, Tyson Barrie is perhaps the most under-appreciated. In fact, unless you follow the Colorado Avalanche closely, you’re probably wondering whether I’m even right to call Barrie one of the NHL’s top offensive defencemen.

A look at the NHL’s official site suggests there’s a case to be made. Barrie is tied for eighth among defenceman in scoring entering action on Monday, with 46 points in 69 games.

At first glance, it looks like a breakout season for the 23-year-old, who is building on a 38-point campaign from his first full season in 2013-14.

But that first glance doesn’t tell the whole story. The following chart shows the NHL’s 10 best defencemen in terms of points/hour at five-on-five over the last two seasons (minimum 1,000 minutes played):

Rk.	Player	Points	Ice Time	Points/Hour
1	Victor Hedman	54	2120.3	1.53
2	Tyson Barrie	46	2079.7	1.33
3	Erik Karlsson	67	3061.5	1.31
4	Hampus Lindholm	49	2454.4	1.20
5	Ryan Ellis	37	1854.5	1.20
6	Mark Giordano	44	2246.9	1.17
7	Duncan Keith	53	2721.5	1.17
8	Alex Pietrangelo	53	2806.2	1.13
9	Roman Josi	53	2849.1	1.12
10	Sami Vatanen	30	1619.2	1.11

Players falling just outside the top 10 include P.K. Subban, Dougie Hamilton, Torey Krug, Mike Green, Shea Weber and Olli Maatta.

Obviously, we’re looking at only a tiny part of the game when we consider five-on-five scoring, but even so this represents a spectacular accomplishment for Barrie. From the moment he graduated to full-time NHLer until now, only one other defenceman in the game has been likelier to score a point on any given shift.

Frankly, that is ridiculous.

Barrie’s power-play totals are also very strong, albeit not “second in the NHL” strong. But in concert with his incredible even-strength numbers, it’s no exaggeration to say that he’s in rarefied air as an offensive defenceman.

He still has some work to do to become an elite two-way defenceman.

The Avs do a much better job of outshooting and outscoring the opposition with Barrie on the ice than with Barrie on the bench, but we’re also talking about a player who isn't generally matched up against top opponents and has the advantage of starting shifts more frequently in the offensive zone than most of his teammates.

Ethan Miller/Getty Images

Colorado head coach Patrick Roy recently told NHL.com’s Rick Sadowski that Barrie’s defensive game was improving, but he also made it clear that he was starting from a place where the coaches felt they needed to shelter him:

"

Defensively, early in the season, we were not comfortable to play him against the top two lines. Recently, he's playing really well defensively. I think if you have a good mix when to go and not to go, that will save some energy and allow him to play better defensively.

"

It’s not surprising to hear those sentiments from Roy. Barrie is, after all, only 5’10” and 190 pounds, making him one of the smaller regular defencemen in the league. He is also only 23 years old and has fewer than 200 NHL games under his belt.

Conventional wisdom suggests that defencemen take longer to develop than forwards because defensive responsibilities take more time to learn. Barrie is still in early days as an NHL player and will doubtless progress, even if he’s never going to be the kind of player who can physically dominate opposing forwards.

But regardless of his flaws in the defensive end of the rink, Barrie’s offensive abilities are awfully special. In that department, he’s easily the best defenceman in Colorado and one of the very best in the NHL.

Statistics courtesy of war-on-ice.com, behindthenet.ca and NHL.com. 

Jonathan Willis covers the NHL for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter for more of his work.