It reflects time on ice, and Barkov gets a lot of it — his average of 22 minutes 55 seconds leads all NHL forwards. “I can play 18 minutes and be tired, and I can play 25 minutes and be okay.”Barkov is one of seven forwards — all but one (Chicago’s Patrick Kane) are centers — averaging at least 22 minutes of ice time. Just two, Barkov and Los Angeles’s Anze Kopitar, played that much last year, and no forwards averaged more than 22 minutes the three seasons before that. …“If you’re asking those guys to play that many minutes, I think it’s unfair to those guys, to be honest. MacKinnon is one of the league’s top scorers with 28 goals and 45 assists in 53 games, and he averages 22 minutes.

Source: Washington Post February 09, 2019 23:05 UTC