This turned into a much longer response than I planned, especially the part about over- and underrated players. Great questions though.
1. What are your earliest hockey memories?
Listening to my grandfather tell me stories about the Montreal Maroons. (Back then, anglophones supported the Maroons and francophones supported the Canadiens. He stopped following hockey when the Maroons folded after the 1938 season).
2. If you had the ability to time travel and witness (live and in-person) ANY single game or event in hockey history..what would it be?
Probably the final game of the 1987 Canada Cup (which I've seen, but not in person). An extraordinary amount of talent on both sides, and a thrilling conclusion.
A more subjective answer would be Game 5 of the 1993 Stanley Cup finals. I moved from Montreal to Toronto about a month before, and even though it wasn't a particularly great game (as far as Stanley Cup deciding games are concerned), it would have been great to see that live.
3. If you could spend 1 hour talking to and interviewing ANY player in hockey history, who would it be?
Eddie Shore. First reason - from what I understand about his personality, he wouldn't hold back or sugar-coat anything. Second reason - as far as I'm aware, there isn't a good biography that exists. Third reason - he's seen so much (he started as a player in a rival league pre-consolidation, had a long career playing against an impressive range of players, spanning from Frank Nighbor to Milt Schmidt, and then having a long career as an owner, so he could maybe see things from both perspectives.
4. Who is your single favorite player of all-time? Pick just one!
Gordie Howe. Maybe it's a cop-out to pick one of the big four, but I've always liked players who show up, year after year, and give a maximum effort with no off-ice drama.
5. Name one player you personally consider highly overrated historically, and one player you consider highly underrated historically. Could be in terms of the HoH or just generally speaking.
Overrated:
- By the general hockey media / "establishment":
- Compilers who were never among the best players in the league, but are being inducted into the Hall strictly on the basis of career totals, inflated due to the era (Andreychuk, Cicarelli, Housley, arguably Gartner). I expect Marleau will be in this category too (though, obviously, he didn't play in the high-scoring eighties).
- Scott Niedermayer, for reasons that are well-documented on HOH.
- Rod Langway, who didn't deserve either of his Norris trophies, and won them due to over-compensation against the backlash for Wilson and Carlyle winning.
- Martin Brodeur during the early 2000's. He didn't deserve the Vezina in 2003 or 2004 (and was bad in the 2001 playoffs). I'm convinced it was cognitive dissonance that prevented save percentage from being more widely accepted in the hockey media at that time (because how can you accept it as an important metric, and also consider him the best goalie in the world?)
- Secondary players on dynasties who earn a spot in the Hall despite not clearly differentiating themselves from their teammates (Duff, Shutt, Lowe, Gillies, etc). For example, maybe Gillies was the 5th most valuable Islander, but can we say that he was clearly more valuable than Goring, or Morrow, or Tonelli, or even Bourne?
- But if I had to pick just one - Terry Sawchuk. I still struggle with him routinely being ranked as a top ten, and even top five, goalie. He had an extraordinary five-year peak at the start of his career, on par with the greatest peaks of any goaltender ever, but the last fifteen years of his career were shockingly underwhelming.
- By HFBoards in general:
- Many current superstars (particularly, but not exclusively, Crosby and Ovechkin) have an annoying bunch of fanboys who, quite often, make plainly misleading arguments for their favourite players.
- Every few years, someone stops by - maybe the same person - and argues that Brian Leetch is better than Ray Bourque based on some very carefully cherry-picked stats.
- Dominik Hasek. Obviously, a reasonable case can be made that he's the greatest goalie ever. But I routinely see people say that "it's not even close", when that's false. Or people compare his stats to Roy's directly, not acknowledging that Roy played in a much higher-scoring era. Or downplaying the times he quit on his team. Or promoting the false narrative that he singlehandedly dragged the 1999 Sabres to the Stanley Cup finals, ignoring the fact that his teammates scored a ton of goals for him that spring (more per game, believe it or not, than five of the other seven teams that made it past the first round).
- By HOH in particular: one player I've recently soured on (ie since the Top 100 project) is Ted Lindsay. I have a tough time seeing him ranked ahead of Steve Yzerman, for example. He earned a ton of year-end all-star nods, but the competition was fairly weak. He was never a Hart finalist, even before Howe had his breakthrough. Lindsay's offense plummeting (from 85 to 39 points) immediately after being traded (and no longer playing with Howe) bugs me.
Underrated:
- By the general hockey media / "establishment":
- The NHL has done an abysmal job of promoting its history. If I had to pick one player in particular, it would be Howie Morenz. The MLB still promotes Babe Ruth to this day - why wouldn't the NHL promote arguably the greatest player of its first thirty years? His tragic death (dying young, probably directly as a result of an on-ice injury) makes it a particularly poignant story.
- Earl Seibert - when was the last time you've heard anything at all about a ten-time all-star defensive defenseman (and arguably the best player on perhaps the most surprising Cup winner of all time)?
- Maybe I shouldn't use a single list as proof of anything, but it's inexcusable that Evgeni Malkin was excluded from the NHL's Top 100 players list. (I actually find him, if general, overrated on this website).
- Andy Bathgate had one of the greatest offensive peaks of any player in history, and matched Howe's scoring for almost a decade. Sure he didn't do much other than score, and his playoff resume is minimal, but I think his accomplishments are pretty much on par with the much more well-know Dionne (who only looks better, superficially, because he played in a higher-scoring era). This was one ranking from the Top 100 project that I think we got absolutely right.
- By HFBoards in general: pretty much anything before 1980 (or even 1990). There was even a recent thread asking if peak Ovechkin would be good enough to play in the "modern" NHL. If I had to pick one (relatively) recent player - Mark Messier. He gets unfairly blamed for not dragging a poorly-designed Canucks team to the playoffs (despite being 37+ and very clearly past his prime). I've also seen him dismissed as a product of Gretzky many times, despite him very clearly having his best seasons right after #99 left. People focus on the "leadership" narrative so much - and I admit that part may be overrated - that they ignore pretty much all of his other attributes.
- By HOH in particular:
- There are players some people refuse to discuss rationally and try to dismiss them with a soundbite. For example - dismissing Esposito outright as a product of Orr (instead of examining what he did without him and trying to understand, as best we can, the extent Orr actually influenced his production). Or dismissing Coffey because he was poor defensively (which he generally was - but the question is, does his offense make up for the bad defense). Any time you see someone try to dismiss a great player with a single bullet point, they're being underrated.
- I've seen several people over the years call Mark Recchi a compiler. I never understood that. He was a top 20 scorer eight times (only achieved by 34 players post-expansion) and he was the leading scorer on his team in six (seven?) of those seasons. He certainly didn't have the highest peak of HOF'ers, but isn't in the same category as Andreychuk etc.
6. If you could watch full-game replays of any and all games from one specific NHL season in history..which season would you choose?
Someone else already mentioned the 1966-67 season, and I think that's a good answer. A tremendous amount of talent concentrated into only six teams, and since the teams played each other so frequently, there was genuine bad blood.
7. Name a player you barely knew anything (or nothing) about before joining HF Boards and the HoH, but you now respect as an all-time great and an important part of history?
Too many to name. I'd say nearly everyone in this thread could pick Frank Nighbor.
My choice would be Henri Richard. Prior to joining HFBoards (almost 16 years ago now!), I knew that he was rated 30th by the Hockey News's Top 100 project from 1998, and I had never heard a stronger justification than "he won 11 Stanley Cups". Over the years I've learned more about his role/usage on the Habs and, although I still think 30th place is much too high, I've learned that there are some strong argument to support his ranking in hockey history, much more subtle and relevant than "he won a bunch of Cups".
8. You’re coaching a team in game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals and it’s overtime. You could have any goaltender in hockey history in your crease, who do you choose?
Patrick Roy. There are some goalies who are marginally better at stopping the puck on average (including Hasek), but Roy has that killer instinct that would make him my go-to in that situation.
9. Same as above. Game 7, Cup finals and OT. Which single player in hockey history do you trust the most with the puck on his stick in that moment to win the game for you?
Mario Lemieux. I realize he never scored an overtime goal in the playoffs. I don't think he's the
greatest goal-scorer in NHL history, but I'd rank him as the best goal-scorer (and the most versatile). If my life was on the line and I needed a goal (assuming he's not injured, or spending his mid thirties moping about the state of the league while retired), he'd be my pick.
10. As a GM, which non-star player would you ALWAYS try to have on your team? Could be a do-it-all utility forward, a heart and soul grinder, or a rock solid D etc..which player in history would you always try to make sure was a part of your clubs no matter how many teams you managed?
Craig Ludwig. His fearless shot-blocking and hideous mustache would be essential for any team I'd manage.
I’ll come back with my answers shortly.
