... a speedball with a great knack for goal scoring. His backhand was particularly lethal, often surprising goalies as that was a largely undeveloped tactic in those days. He also pioneered the "wrong wing" theory, as he was a left handed shot playing on the right side...
Situational scoring data only goes back to the 1952-53 season. I don't know if this is because that's currently the last continuous season we have in the HSP currently, or if it's due to a limitation in the way goals were recorded prior to that. So this list only includes post-1952 players.
The below scores are the 7-year ESVsX totals for all players who are eligible and are currently listed on the 3rd or 4th line of a roster post. A couple guys were a couple of days behind and I made sure to include their recently selected players.
Dave Keon, John Tonelli, David Backes, Pete Mahovlich, Peter Bondra (?!), Charlie Simmer (assuming...), Terry O'Reilly, John McKenzie, Zach Parise, Red Berenson, Brad Marchand, Wilf Paiement, Vic Hadfield, Steve Larmer, Wendel Clark, Steve Shutt, Alex Tanguay, Brian Rolston, and Jimmy Roberts.
He is Soviet, so he had to be two-way - there were almost no floaters in that team - from what I remember, only Balderis was criticized for not working hard defensively. But, off course, offence is Shalimov's main strength - he played less defense, than, say, Kapustin.He's pure offense, right? There's maybe one more winger I'd take over him for pure offense but it's close.
Ahh...I miss the days when designated goons were a staple of the ATD roster. Well, there's still time, I suppose.
I'll take Jay Bouwmeester, D. More info to come later
Good pick, he might have been the best defenseman in last year's MLD.
are you referring to Magnuson?
I don't know if I'd straight up call him a "designated goon"; after all, it's not like he really intimidated anyone. He was an inspirational, heart-and-soul, chumbawamba type of player, wasn't he?
In his favour, he did earn some norris votes (5th, 8th, 12th) and played a role on excellent teams (30% better than average). Only a 21.6 minute player on his career, on the other hand, and flamed out fairly quickly. Excellent PK stats.
Nah...more pining for the glory days when giant, angry cokeheads would get taken unironically as spares or even 4th liners because every team needed to play that olde time hockey.
Obviously with 2 spare forwards and a backup goalie I should be looking for a spare defenseman. What should I be looking for in a defenseman? Offense? PP ability? No, not really. If a PP defenseman goes down, Savard and Johnson are both passable, plus I have those four forwards.
So I think the best thing to do would be to grab the best defensive defenseman that I can - a guy who is not just an injury fill-in, but one who could make a guy like Vadnais a healthy scratch during a series against a potent opponent, and fill in on the PK.
So I'll select the best defensive defenseman on the board, who also happens to be the worst offensive defenseman among the rest of the next 500 picks, and who also happens to be the guy jarek would have taken if he was scooped on Keith Magnuson - Al Arbour, D.
Arbour was twice 5th in Norris voting and it sure wasn't for his puck skills. He only has a 231 game post-expansion sample to go by, but in that time he was on the ice for an obscene 68% of his team's PP goals against, and his team was 11% better than average on the penalty kill. This is actually the 5th highest mark of all-time among players with 200+ games (along with Arbour, the rest of the top-5 are all guys who were trusted defensive veterans when expansion hit).
Arbour was Leafs property for far too long, unfortunately for him, and though he was probably the best defenseman in North America to not have a regular NHL job from 1963-1967, it was only a symptom of not being better than Bobby Baun, which is what it would have taken to crack the Leafs' top-4 in those years.
He was an inspirational, heart-and-soul, chumbawamba type of player, wasn't he?
Magnuson was an outspoken anarchist?