GLENDALE, AZ – MARCH 09: Erik Karlsson #65 of the Ottawa Senators awaits a face off during the first period of the NHL game against the Arizona Coyotes at Gila River Arena on March 9, 2017 in Glendale, Arizona. (Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images)

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Wow can you believe it?

After all these years, you’re starting to see the big names in hockey media look at each other and say to themselves, “Maybe this Erik Karlsson guy is one of the three or five best players in the world.” And sure, this is an argument you could have first advanced several years ago, but you’d have been laughed out of the room.

All it took was a 130-foot pass that went 15 feet in the air and still landed perfectly on a guy’s tape, in addition to a bunch of points and huge minutes and a gigantic possession advantage against Beloved Canadian Prince Patrice Bergeron for everyone to acknowledge that yeah, this guy who’s certainly been the best defenseman in the league for probably four or five of his eight career seasons might actually be completely world-class, instead of the qualified-world-class we liked to put on him for no good reason in particular.

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But yeah, turns out this kind has been this beautifully, electrifyingly good boy pretty much all along. And because he is so nice and so good I have seven stats about how he is the perfect hockey player and if you don’t think so you should be fired into the sun.

And to the guys who took eight years of convincing, welcome to 2013. You’re not gonna believe how Breaking Bad ends.

7. I don’t know if you heard this but Erik Karlsson scores a lot for a modern defenseman

Erik Karlsson came into the league in 2009-10 and was relatively quiet his first two seasons, netting a combined 71 points in 135 games.

That’s pretty good for a defenseman at any age, let alone one playing his age-19 and age-20 seasons. That number put him 30th among defensemen over those two seasons. That’s “No. 1 defenseman” territory (given that there are only 30 NHL teams, you see) for a kid that young. Pretty good.

It was the next year he went off. Remember those 71 points in 2009-10 and 2010-11 combined? Yeah, he scored 78 in 81 the next season. No problem. And the production continued from there as you well know. In the 421 regular-season games he’s played since then start of 2011-12 — and remember he suffered a debilitating injury that limited him to 17 games in the lockout season — he has 385 points.

Three hundred eighty-five points in four hundred twenty-one games. That’s 0.91 points per game. From the blue line. On a team that, during this period, wasn’t exactly the most talented in the league.

That puts him, obviously, first in the league in D scoring over the past six seasons. The next-closest guy is Dustin Byfuglien, and has 98 fewer points than Karlsson does. That’s only a little bigger than the gap between second-place Byfuglien and 30th-place Tyson Barrie.

6. And he also scores a lot for a defenseman in any era

What you have to understand is that Karlsson is doing this in what is undoubtedly the period in which it’s most difficult to score, ever. It’s never been harder to put up points in this league, and Karlsson is doing it for fun every single night.

In fact, only 14 defensemen in the entire history of the National Hockey League have put up at least 450 points in their first eight seasons. Karlsson is 13th on that list in total points. He’s 11th in points per game.

Literally everyone in front of him on the points-per-game list is a Hall of Famer, except Gary Suter. (Which, hey, looks like Gary Suter should probably be a Hall of Famer.) But other than that? Orr, Coffey, Potvin, Bourque, Leetch, Housley, Howe, Salming, Murphy. Rarified air.

Not even Nick Lidstrom matched that accomplishment. Like, that’s crazy. He played on an All-Star team in one of the highest-scoring eras in league history. He only had 423 points, in 612 games. Karlsson’s ahead in points, by 33, but behind in games played by 56. Incredible!

View photos LOS ANGELES, CA – JANUARY 29: Erik Karlsson #65 of the Ottawa Senators poses for a portrait prior to the 2017 Honda NHL All-Star Game at Staples Center on January 29, 2017 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Harry How/Getty Images) More