1981 Conn Smythe: Bossy vs Potvin

[LightningStorm]

"Good two-play play" is another way of saying "Not exceptional at anything".

Just kidding! (Sort of.) But there seemed to be this thing in the early 80s where Norris trophies and Conn Smythes briefly became the award-narrative-of-choice for the moldy-fig old-school hockey guys who wanted it to be 1957 forever. So, we got Rod Langway with not one (reasonable) but two (!) Norris trophies, Clark Gillies with a Conn Smythe, Messier-over-Gretzky '84 Conn Smythe, etc.

Not to say some of these choices weren't reasonable, but the voting mindset then just doesn't exist anymore. Nowadays, there's more NHLPA / NHL / advertising / Sports' networks cash to be made if Crosby, Ovechkin, or McDavid wins big awards. Back then, nobody thought about that. It was just, "We need to stop giving Norris trophies to high-scoring defencemen like Randy Carlyle. Reverse-narrative! From now on, it's for the one-dimensional stay-at-home guy -- LANGWAY!" (Mass nodding of heads in agreement.)

Good post Panther. There does seem to be a trend of voters wanting to award blue collar players in the early 80's, with your examples of Goring, Langway, and Messier fitting that. And as you said, they vary in how reasonable they were on their own merits. Don't know what their motivations were, but old school backlash against what still is the highest scoring era in NHL history wouldn't surprise me.

Also, in this case I would've thought the old school voters would've liked Potvin for how feared a hitter he was. Passing someone of his skill and grit over for someone who was mostly grit in Goring does have some parallels to Langway winning the Norris as a purely defensive d-man. Seems like they wanted to highlight 1957 hockey to the exclusion of early 80's hockey, rather than in conjunction with it, which could've been done by giving Potvin the Smythe in '81 and either him, Bourque, or Howe the Norris in '83 and '84.

I also completely agree that business/marketing wise, something like this wouldn't happen today, with name recognition being more important. Bossy ending his 50 in 50 season with a CS or Potvin, a lightning rod in the all NY hockey rivalry (2 years since his hit on Nilsson), winning it each would've been too good a story to pass up on that I doubt Goring even gets considered if it happened today. We saw this in 2016 and 2018, where IMO Crosby was the 3rd best Pen (I had Letang 1st, Kessel 2nd) and Ovechkin was 50/50 with Kuznetsov, but name recognition put both of them over the top.

 

[Moose Head]

"Good two-play play" is another way of saying "Not exceptional at anything".

Just kidding! (Sort of.) But there seemed to be this thing in the early 80s where Norris trophies and Conn Smythes briefly became the award-narrative-of-choice for the moldy-fig old-school hockey guys who wanted it to be 1957 forever. So, we got Rod Langway with not one (reasonable) but two (!) Norris trophies, Clark Gillies with a Conn Smythe, Messier-over-Gretzky '84 Conn Smythe, etc.

Not to say some of these choices weren't reasonable, but the voting mindset then just doesn't exist anymore. Nowadays, there's more NHLPA / NHL / advertising / Sports' networks cash to be made if Crosby, Ovechkin, or McDavid wins big awards. Back then, nobody thought about that. It was just, "We need to stop giving Norris trophies to high-scoring defencemen like Randy Carlyle. Reverse-narrative! From now on, it's for the one-dimensional stay-at-home guy -- LANGWAY!" (Mass nodding of heads in agreement.)

You can also add Gainey winning over Lafleur, Lemaire and even Robinson in 79

 

[Pominville Knows]

You can also add Gainey winning over Lafleur, Lemaire and even Robinson in 79

I mean, Bob Gainey at one point per game?