So Ubiquitous had an interesting quote in this mornings FTB:

Little known fact: By most people’s definition, there are only 12 first line centers in the league. Pittsburgh has two.

This lead me to list out who I thought would meet the "average hockey fan's" criteria to be a number 1 C and in further discussion with Ubiquitous we noticed that many of them never change teams.  I did a bit of an analysis on this pattern so if you're interested read on after the jump.

To determine who are #1 Cs I used fairly lofty guidelines.  They have to be one of the following 2:

1. Point per game threat (have been 0.95 points per game or greater more than once in the last 4 years)
2. Consistent 65+ point player who has elite defensive talent

I came up with the following list names.  I have included how they first entered the league (round drafted or FA signing) and how many teams they have played for (and if multiple how did they move)

Some things I notice:

1. They really don't move around much.  With 26 players only 5 have played for more than 1 team (less than 20%).
2. Of those that do move they are more likely to be traded (all 5 of them) than signed as free agents (2 of them).
3. Blossoming late in your career may explain why some ended up on more than one team (the later team discovers their  value (Savard and Briere)
4. I know we hear it all the time, but wow the 2003 draft year was incredible. 6 of the 26 are from the 2003 draft year (5 from the first round), thats more than the number of players that have been to more than one team!
5. Drafting high is important but not necessary.  There are 18 first rounders, 4 second rounders, and one each from the 3rd, 4th, 6th and 7th rounds.  Included in those first rounders are 4 first overalls, 4 second overalls, 2 3rd overalls (1 of which was H Sedin which may as well of been the 2nd overall), and 1 4th overall.  So 69% are first rounders and 42% are top 5 picks.

This all suggests to me that drafting well (and high as often as possible) is very important in getting elite centers (further analysis would have to be necessary for other positions).

Now I will look at how these players are distributed around the league.  So there are 26 players listed but some are on the same teams.  So now I have looked at it by team and listed who their #1 C is if they don't have anyone on the list (#1 C was determined both by points and Average Time On Ice (from tsn.ca):

So some thoughts looking at this:

1. There are 13 teams in the NHL without one of these "legitimate #1Cs". (Notes Olli Jokinen would have been a legitimate #1 C in the past; John Tavares could easily become one for the Islanders; and Brandon Dubinsky is playing like one so far this year).
2. Most of the teams without a #1 C are near the bottom of the league.  Only 4 of the 13 teams are in playoff spots right now, with 2 of them NYR and CLB in 8th seed.  The glaring outlier however is St Louis who currently has the best record (per game) in the NHL.  (Note its early in the season so teams rankings can fluctuate a lot).

The data is here for all of you to see too, so please comment below.

Cheers