VanIslander
20 years of All-Time Drafts on HfBoards
Apparently not.So, is there a timeline for voting here?
April begins this week.
Vegas odds are 50/50 that the regular season will be in the middle of April.
Apparently not.So, is there a timeline for voting here?
Apparently not.
April begins this week.
Vegas odds are 50/50 that the regular season will be in the middle of April.
I think Makarov should be bumped up based on his PK and possession ability. Batis started a nice thread in the HOH board about how Makarov and Krutov were the top PK forwards for the Soviets with some good supporting video evidence. I've included a lot of the info in my Makarov bio.
Additional thoughts on my own players:
-Giroux is pretty good defensively in real life. At the very least, he should be better than Maltsev. On my own team, I think he should be on the same level as Cook, whom I believe has very little on his defensive game.
-Nash should also be on the same level as Cook
-Apparently, Krutov was considered very good defensively during his prime. Again, he could probably be on the same level as Cook.
So, either Cook needs to be bumped down one notch or the above guys need to be bumped up a notch.
No way in my opinion.
Still think Modano is overrated around these parts defensively as well. I wouldn't have him the equal of a lot of the guys in his tier.
"Here´s Krutov. Most valuable player in the Soviet Union last year, most think now he is probably their best forward he has gone by Makarov. And the thing they like to talk about Krutov the thing they keep mentioning is that not only is he a great offensive player with great speed, great balance all of those things but he is also a terrific defensive player, great backchecker and plays a total game." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FeJ3lCpU6U&t=34m4s
I have no specific interest to 'sell' Martinec here (he's a consensus choice for top 20, right??), but since he is my favourite player, I have naturally followed him somewhat more closely than many other players. One exceptional skill I have noticed was his ability to steal pucks. Some proof:
1972 World Championships, vs. USSR, Martinec steals the puck in his own zone and sets up Nedomansky for Czecholovakia’s first goal
1976 Olympics, vs. USSR, Martinec steals the puck from Viktor Shalimov and makes a play
1976 Canada Cup, vs. USSR, Martinec steals the puck from Skvortsov and passes it to Novak (don’t listen to the commentary, it’s totally out of sync = irritating!)
1976 Canada Cup, vs. Canada (RR)
- during Canada’s PP, Martinec strips Bill Barber of the puck and clears
- Lapointe mishandles the puck, and Martinec smells blood quickly & gets a great scoring chance
1976 Canada Cup, vs. Canada (final, G1), Martinec just takes the puck from Savard
1976 Canada Cup, vs. Canada (final, G2), Martinec steals the puck from Lapointe
1978 World Championships, vs. USSR (final round), Martinec steals the puck during Soviet PP, and has a breakaway (controversy follows)
One thing that I hadn’t paid much attention previously is Martinec’s strength. Only when I saw it mentioned in a Finnish sports book (a mention of Martinec 'manhandling' Ragulin!), I realized that yes, he was a strong player at least for his size, which maybe separated him from e.g. another small 'master technician', Vladimir Vikulov of USSR. Some demonstrations of that:
1976 Canada Cup, vs. USSR
- Martinec bumps Bilyaletdinov off the puck, sets up Bohuslav Stastny for Czechoslovakia’s 4th goal (again, don’t pay attention to the commentary)
- Martinec shows good strength (with the puck) on the boards during Czechoslovakia’s PP (see above about the commentary)
1976 Canada Cup, vs. Canada (RR), Martinec checks Reggie Leach for a good defensive effort
1976 Canada Cup, vs. Canada (final, G2) Martinec strips Bobby Orr of the puck, shows good strength on the boards
re: bell curve
Does a bell curve really make sense?
Instead of defense, let's just look at overall hockey ability. How would that be distributed? Certainly not a bell curve. There are few elite players, more good players, quite a few average players and probably a thousand players that could play a 4th line role adequately. The difference between a 4th liner and an MLD player is probably not much.
Now looking at only defense obviously is different. There are players who are drafted specifically for their defense and not much else (Draper) and there are players who suck at defense and drafted only for their offense (Ovechkin). These things flatten the curve out a bit.
I think something closer to a uniform distribution might be more appropriate. 10 tiers might be a bit much though.
Maybe something like 10-3. 10 for the best, 5 for the exactly average and 3 and 4 reserved for guys like Hull, Cowley and Ovechkin.
Are there less terrible defensive players than average ones? I'm trying to be careful about using the word average because in statistics it can mean different things.
Imagine all people who have ever played hockey at any level are lined up.
Are their more average defensive players or are their more terrible defensive players? Well considering there are 1000 tines more recreational players than career minor leaguers, there's definitely more terrible ones.
Now obviously we are only dealing with the elite here but the distribution shouldn't change. We are basically just ignoring the left 99.9% of the graph.
And like I said previously, players that are only drafted for their defensive or offense flatten it slightly.
There has to be some kind of bell shape...there's not just as many elite defensive players as there is average defensive players, right? Same goes for terrible defensive players compared to average defensive players.
It's "Namba 17 & VanIslander". The newbie drove and I rode shotgun and helped navigate.I believe dreakmur and vanislander's teams do very well, the former with top end defensive players, the latter with depth.
It was definitely joint efforts and joint team. I can't say whose this team is, because we discussed every player and every pick and every pick was made only after we both came to an agreement about it.But it's Namba's team (or better Namba 17 & VanIslander).
I just would like to pay some attention to great analysis of Mikhailov's play, made by Sturminator, defense included:View attachment 94561
This file is a screenshot of my attempt to rank every team's forwards from 1-15 (or less, depending on the number of spare forwards) by their overall defensive ability and impact. The following considerations were made:
- selke voting
- overall reputation aside from voting
- penalty killing value
- volume and value of quotes
- longevity, did a player provide the same average level as another but for longer?
- sometimes we know little to nothing about a player's defensive ability. These players are at the bottom ends of the lists for the most part. I made educated guesses based on other factors: were they seen as a leader? backchecking might have been why. was another one of their linemates known as good defensively? that probably meant they didn't have to focus on it. were they tough or good in the corners? probably means they used those skills to some degree in their own zone. Did they ever play defense? that had to help them as a forward to some degree. and so on.
Results provided in good faith. Take a look at your own team and let me know if anything seems out of whack. I may know something about every player, and everything about some players, but no one can know everything about every player.
With every team ranked on its own, I'm going to take this and try a big 1-357 rank now. But it won't be ranked in such a hair-splitting fashion - everyone will be in tiers, and it will be on a bell curve with players rated anything from 0 to 10, with fewer and fewer players in each tier as you move outwards from 5 towards 0 and 10. With all of us drafting a large number of players who are "very good" defensively or even just "good", it might help to put into perspective where some players rank and how good a player has to be before you can really call him good in an ATD sense, or, as some put it "at least a plus defensively".
One thing that stands out to me is Balderis ranking compared to some other Europeans of the 70's and 80's. Balderis on the same tier as Krutov, one tier ahead of Makarov, Kharlamov and Shalimov and especially three tiers ahead of Martinec all seem abit off to me. Krutov and Makarov should both be at least one tier above Balderis in my opinion. Krutov who was considered to be a very good defensive player during his prime should probably be even further ahead. Here is a quote about Krutovs defensive ability from the 1987 Canada Cup finals.
And Martinec does in my opinion belong around the same tier as Balderis at the very least. I have not made any in depth analysis about the defensive game of Martinec or Balderis but three tiers separating them seems like alot to me. Here is an excellent post from VMBM regarding Martinec ability to steal pucks.
Quod Erat Demonstrandum; his defensive contribution is never understood in the ATD eitherJyrki Laelma
"The most important thing is that Martinec's work capacity is unbelievable - even a simpleton can see that he is always able to carry the puck over the blue line, but his defensive contribution is never understood," said a journalist from Pardubice in Düsseldorf.
I just would like to pay some attention to great analysis of Mikhailov's play, made by Sturminator, defense included:
http://hfboards.mandatory.com/sh...81&postcount=6
Also, there are quotes about great defensive game by almost anyone in our roster - Blake, Phillips (who was named the best defensive F of his time), Ratelle, Walsh, even Gartner etc - literary, anyone.
We created a really two-way team - we don't have any F in the main roster, who would have been bad defensively and haven't backcheck.
Probably, because it's true?I find it interesting that you say this, and specifically point out Ratelle and Gartner, but then go on to say how you think other players don't have much defensive ability in the ATD.
I see Half of your posts are about how great was Joliat defensivelyI'm thinking of Joliat specifically, but there were others.
This is just because I assassinated moreThis is especially prevalent when you go through the assassination thread.
Just some my additional thoughts:Here's what I came up with...
even though this was not meant to split hairs, certainly when i got towards the end of a tier and had to fill the last few spots from about a dozen who seemed deserving, it still felt like splitting hairs.
So definitely there will be cases where a player will be a level away from where you might put him. But if you see anyone who I'm way off on (let's say 2 levels or more), let's talk about him.
Additional thoughts on my own players:
-Giroux is pretty good defensively in real life. At the very least, he should be better than Maltsev. On my own team, I think he should be on the same level as Cook, whom I believe has very little on his defensive game.
I agree with this. Early in his career when Giroux killed penalties more, he and M. Richards were amazing shorthanded. Even after Richards left Giroux was still a great PKer. It wasn't until new coaches changed the Flyers PK and took Giroux off almost completely to try and ease his minutes. Overall I'd say he should at least be in the 5 tier on seventies overall chart. He's behind some active guys not currently that he's, IMO, clearly better than defensively.
I think we're taking this a little too far. seventies rankings are just his personal opinions, and shouldn't be treated as the actual rankings.