John Carlson One Of The Best United States Defensemen Of All Time

John Carlson has been a top NHL defenseman for a long time now. When you look at his numbers I would say he has been putting up top defenseman numbers since the 2014-15 season where he scored 12 goals and 55 points that season.

It’s hard to believe for me, but 2014 was nearly ten years ago now. Where have the years gone? John Carlson has been putting up great stats for nearly a decade. While you and I think many Capitals fans agree that he has shortcomings in other areas of his game, you cannot and should never discredit his offensive talents.

If you can get a top pairing defenseman to score 50+ points for you a year I think you will be pretty happy. That’s what Carlson does and has been doing for years now.

Since 2014-15 Carlson has scored 50+ points five times. Another two times he was on pace to go over fifty points, but injury or shortened seasons caused him to miss that mark. You can say in seven of the last eight years Carlson scored, or was on pace to score fifty or more points. Not too shabby!

On top of scoring or being on pace to score fifty that many years he has also scored 70 or more points twice. He had exactly 70 in 2018-19 before he topped that the very next season scoring 75 points in just 69 games. The COVID shortened season ruining what could have been a very special season for him.

Scoring that many points for that amount of time got me curious. Where is Carlson all time in scoring in terms of United States defensemen? Where is he currently, and how high could he end up when his career is said and done?

Carlson is currently 11th all time among United States defensemen with 577 points. He is third in active U.S. defensemen behind only Ryan Suter and Keith Yandle. Carlson has played nearly 400 less games than Suter and more than 200 fewer games than Yandle. Suter and Yandle also rank 9th and 10th respectively. These two players being active will be harder to pass but I expect Carlson to someday pass two these players as well.

The Washington Capitals defenseman is only 32-years-old. He has plenty of years ahead of him and some of those years will be very productive. Don’t expect a fall off for a couple of more seasons.

Three more seasons of at least fifty points should be expected. On top of those seasons you would think he can put up some more thirty point seasons as well. Lets just give Carlson the 150 points he would get if he were to score exactly fifty points in each of his next three seasons.

If we ignore what he will finish this season with, since we don’t know what he will finish with, that puts him at 727 career points. That would put him at 7th all time among U.S. defensemen. After that he would not have long to go until he passes Mark Howe and Mathieu Schneider to be top five all time.

Howe sits at 742 career points and Schneider is at 743. Just fifteen and sixteen more points for Carlson and he is in the top five.

After he passes those two fine defensemen it is a little while until he can catch the next guy, that being Gary Suter who is at 844 points. Maybe catchable? Probably catchable? I don’t know. Everything depends on how long Carlson can remain a productive player and health remains a factor for everyone who laces up a pair of skates.

After Suter and his 844 it seems unlikely Carlson would go up much further. Chris Chelios would be next, but he sits at 948 career points. Brian Leetch is next at 1,028 before you get to the top and Phil Housley’s 1,232.

When you talk about defensemen that bring offense from the back end there are currently not many guys, if any at all, who do it better than John Carlson. When he decides to hang up the skates he could easily end up a top five U.S. defenseman in scoring.