by Eric Duhatschek, Breaking News from globeandmail.com

Joe Corvo logs plenty of ice time for Carolina. (Doug Pensinger / Getty Images)

"Some players just have that God-given talent," said MacInnis, the St. Louis Blues vice-president of hockey operations and someone who averaged an eye-popping 29 minutes, 7 seconds of ice time during the 1998-99 NHL season.

"These guys — the Chris Prongers, the Scott Niedermayers or the Nicklas Lidstroms — they're so efficient with their work ethic and in how they play the game, that they make things look easy out there."

Of all the statistics charted in a figures-obsessed era, time on ice may be the most illuminating, if underrated and largely ignored number. More than any other stat, ice time illustrates a player's internal value and importance to a team.

"You can get a pretty good idea of what a coach thinks of his group — who he plays against the other team's best players and who he's hiding — just by looking at their minutes played after the game," Carolina Hurricanes head coach Paul Maurice said.

Maurice clearly thinks a lot of the Hurricanes' own Joe Corvo, the former Ottawa Senators defenseman who never found a home in the nation's capital but is currently second in the league in minutes played behind the 35-year-old Pronger, who is now with the Philadelphia Flyers.

Corvo's lofty position will come as a complete surprise in Ottawa, but he is not the only comparative unknown logging big minutes in the early going.

Consider two others in the top 10: The Colorado Avalanche's Kyle Quincey, who switched teams (from the Detroit Red Wings to Los Angeles Kings) on waiver wire a year ago, and the Anaheim Ducks' James Wisniewski, who was dealt by the Chicago Blackhawks at last year's trading deadline but inherited a lot of Pronger's minutes with the Ducks.

To play upward of 25 minutes a night, which is what only 16 NHL players were averaging as of last Thursday, requires skill, stamina and the ability to play in every situation: power play, penalty killing, even strength.

As Maurice implied, so often in today's NHL, a coach needs to "hide" a player's weaknesses by limiting his ice time in certain circumstances or against a highly skilled opponent.

Philosophically, Flames coach Brent Sutter believes in distributing minutes more equitably than his predecessor, Mike Keenan. Last year, Bouwmeester and Dion Phaneuf, now a teammate in Calgary, ranked one-two in overall ice time. Under Sutter, Phaneuf's ice time has been reduced — to 23:39, still 28th in the league — but Bouwmeester's numbers are as high as ever.

NHL News

• Kronwall out 4-8 weeks
• Sedin returns to Canucks' roster


• Stars' Neal suspended 2 games

 Photos:

• Evolution of the goalie mask
• Best goalie masks today
• Hot hockey mamas

"It's about quality time, not quantity," Sutter said. "I want to see quality minutes. If a guy played 28 to 30 minutes a game and wasn't effective, then maybe he should only play 24 or 25."

In Bouwmeester's first year in Florida, he played slightly more than 20 minutes a game, a time when he says the Panthers "were easing me in. When you're 19, they're not going to throw you out and play all those minutes."

Maybe not then, but that trend is changing, too. Last year, the Kings used 19-year-old rookie defenseman Drew Doughty an average of 23:29 a game. It's the same this year in Tampa Bay, where Lightning rookie defenseman Viktor Hedman is playing an astonishing 24:38 a night, 19th in the NHL.

What's even more extraordinary, according to MacInnis, is how much more difficult it is to play big minutes in today's free-flowing NHL.

"You just can't hook on to a guy and pick him and ride him into the boards any more; those days are gone. Now, you have to mirror a guy. Wherever he goes, you go. So it's certainly tougher for a guy to play as many minutes as he used to," he said. "A few can still do it."

Most of those that can are defensemen.

Only three forwards cracked the top 60 in ice time: Alexander Ovechkin (Washington Capitals), Ryan Getzlaf (Ducks) and Ilya Kovalchuk (Atlanta Thrashers). But if defensemen are so important, why aren't they the highest-paid players in the league?

MacInnis, wearing his front-office cap, laughed and said: "I've been saying that for years, but I'm not saying it any more. But it's an interesting point because they're so hard to get. Everybody's looking for a good, solid puck-moving defenseman that can play in all situations. Well, you know what? They don't fall off trees."

Copyright 2009 The Globe and Mail, a division of CTVglobemedia Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved
	Terms & Conditions     Privacy Copyright © 2009 LexisNexis, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.