from Tal Pinchevsky at ESPN,

Since so many of the league's most dynamic players now occupy spots on the blue line, every team is looking for an elite defenseman. Erik Karlsson, Brent Burns and Drew Doughty have established themselves as franchise players by becoming the engines that drive their respective teams' offense from the back end. Any defenseman capable of making a swift tape-to-tape pass out of his own zone might have a place in the NHL.

When it came to defensemen driving the attack, the Predators' fleet-footed quartet of Subban, Roman Josi, Ryan Ellis and Mattias Ekholm proved crucial in Nashville's run to the Stanley Cup Final, in which it lost in six games to the Pittsburgh Penguins. When those four generated offense, the Predators won. In fact, the Preds went 5-0 in the postseason when they got goals from Josi, who was named on Sept. 19 to replace Mike Fisher as the team's captain.

"To have somebody that can help you get out of the zone, that's a big plus. A guy who has two guys coming at him and he still gets the puck out and on the tape -- not just distributing on the boards," said veteran goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury...

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