Marc-Edouard Vlasic is one of the most intriguing players in the National Hockey League. He's become a staple of the San Jose Sharks blue-line. He earned national recognition after being named to Team Canada's roster at the Sochi Games. And yet, despite consistent performance on the biggest stages, he's often left off of the list of the league's best rearguards.

One of the elements that seems to hold Vlasic back from proper consideration as an elite defender is that he doesn't necessarily fit neatly into the boxes used to describe his comparables. Players like P.K. Subban, Erik Karlsson, Drew Doughty, and Duncan Keith are recognized for their ability to create offensively and drive play territorially. Players like Zdeno Chara, Shea Weber, and Ryan Suter are more regarded for their ability to deter shot attempts and scoring chances, relatively excelling in the defensive zone.

Generally, the above group of players – you can throw in Alex Pietrangelo, Mark Giordano and Ryan McDonagh – are talked about as the game's best on the back end. I find the regular omission of Vlasic here odd, and I think it's largely because he's a unique player. There's no definitive aspect of his game that stands head and shoulders above everyone else. He doesn't have Erik Karlsson's skating, or Zdeno Chara's physicality, or Shea Weber's slap shot. He's just pretty good at – well, everything.

Consider this simple plot of the top defenders' performances over the last three seasons. Here, the x-axis is raw Corsi%, or the shot-share the player's team had when he was on the ice. The y-axis is Goal%, or the goal-share the player's team enjoyed when he was on the ice. The size of the bubble indicates 60-minute scoring rates. The larger the bubble, the more productive the scorer.

These are fairly crude multi-year numbers, but the driving point here should be that Vlasic is right in the mix with some of hockey's finest. Here, Vlasic has enjoyed just over 54 per cent of the shot-share with his team on the ice, and just under 54 per cent of the goal-share. As an aside, other bubbles of note: Chara, for an older guy, has still more or less dominated (56 per cent of shot-share; 58 per cent of goal-share). Karlsson's bubble is the size of Jupiter because his scoring rate is miles and miles ahead of the competition. It's also remarkable to see how close Ryan McDonagh and P.K. Subban are here. Terrifyingly, Montreal could have had both.

Back to Vlasic. Where I think he ultimately stands out is in his relative numbers, in which we can compare San Jose's performance with the player on the ice as opposed to San Jose's performance with the player off the ice. Intuitively speaking, if Vlasic was really driving play, we'd see San Jose's numbers spike when he takes a shift.

So, let's take Marc-Edouard Vlasic's Relative Corsi% over the last three years, and roll it over 10-game spans. I prefer to use rolling averages for player and team data analysis because it can smooth out short-term fluctuation and help identify longer-term trends. What we generally see with the league's leading defenders is consistency over break-even or 0.0% Relative Corsi% - which is the threshold where a team sees the same shot-share with the player on the ice as off the ice. How does Vlasic fare?

The games are chronologically ordered, starting in 2011 and 2014. Other than a small blip (games 43-50) where Vlasic was lagging behind the team average, he's generally been a positive Relative Corsi% player. And you'll quickly notice the longer-term trend here, too – Vlasic's numbers continue to rise above the team averages, which probably speak both to his improvement as a player, and San Jose's reliance on him to drive play at even-strength.

The latter part is interesting. While it speaks to Vlasic's capabilities, it may also speak to San Jose's capabilities – or, lack thereof – when Vlasic steps off the ice. San Jose's still getting the better part of the shot-differential when Vlasic's off (it's a touch over 50 per cent over the last three seasons), but it's considerably lagging behind what the team's accomplishing with Vlasic. For a team with legitimate Stanley Cup hopes, bringing their "without Vlasic" numbers closer to their "with Vlasic" numbers should be an organizational goal.

All in all, it seems to me that Vlasic is one of the league's premier defenders. San Jose's recognized it. Team Canada's recognized it. But, the discussion of the league's best defenders has far too often omitted the rock on San Jose's back-end. Let's try and change that going forward.