Morenz also died early and tragically, adding to his "francophone folk hero" status, while Shore was still alive and adding to his legend as an Ol' Dirty ******* as an AHL coach.
I am surprised this is not a more compelling point to IE. He spends most of his spare time, from what I can tell, defending Crosby in the HOH section against people who say "boy, for such a great player he has ONLY two scoring titles and ONLY two Harts!!!" when a deeper look at how close he was to those awards and how often shows his record is clearly unmatched in this era.
The first paragraph just extends my point about his nostalgic lure/folk here status as you put it. He gets the benefit of eastern bias, which absolutely factors into these type of polls and retroactive views/votes. There have been plenty of discussions about this in the ATD and HoH sections that I can recall.
I'm not sure how to take the 2nd part, given I've rarely engaged in deep Crosby discussion since I've come back.
The main culprits that I've noticed over the past month in that regard are daver and to a lesser degree, a few others.
To expand on the depth of awards/points....
Morenz won 3 Harts.
Let's take a look at each year from his first season in 23-24.
1923-24
-Doesn't place and Frank Nighbor wins the first ever Hart trophy despite only scoring 17 points, which placed him 8th overall.
1924-25
-Morenz finishes 4th in scoring, and 2nd in Hart, losing to Billy Burch.
1925-26
-finishes tied for 5th in scoring, and a distant 6th in Hart, behind Stewart, Cleghorn, Nighbor, Worters, and Hooley Smith. Frank Nighbor, an aging vet now has a 1st and 3rd place in Hart voting. He's a guy who almost surely bests Morenz if the Hart had been around earlier, IMHO, given what he did in the NHA/NHL in the late teens and early 20's and what we know about what people thought of Nighbor during that time period.
1926-27
-finishes 3rd in scoring, and doesn't place in the Hart vote that I can see.
1927-28
-Morenz's first dominant season, at age 25, wins the Art Ross and Hart. The next best forward in Hart voting that year? George Hay. Awesome year, no doubt, but Hart competition was pretty weak by my estimation.
1928-29
-Tied for 3rd in scoring, doesn't place in Hart vote that I can see.
1929-30
-Places a distant 7th in scoring, and this year saw Cooney Weiland of all people post the most dominant offensive season of the NHL existence to date and would stand as such for 15 years. (Yes I know that forward passing came into effect without offsides, but Morenz played a full year under these conditions).
1930-31
-Morenz wins his 2nd Art Ross, edging out Goodfellow and wins his 2nd of 3 Harts, besting Shore, Clancy, Goodfellow an Stewart. Stellar year.
1931-32
-Finishes 3rd in scoring, but gets his 3rd Hart trophy, besting Ching Johnson.
1932-33
-Finishes 10th in scoring, doesn't place in Hart voting
1933-34
-Doesn't place in Hart voting, outside top 10 in scoring
1934-35
-Doesn't place in Hart voting, outside top 10 in scoring. Eddie Shore wins the Hart, besting Charlie Conacher, Art Coulter, Frank Boucher and Aurele Joliat. Hardly weak competition.
1935-36
-Same as previous 2 years. Nothing to note other than his career was about over. Eddie Shore wins the Hart again, over Hooley Smith, Charlie Conacher, Sweeney Schriner and Red Dutton. Not quite as strong as the year before, but certainly not any worse then Morenz's comp in 1927-28.
Again, Morenz won 3 Harts, was runner up once and never had another top 5 finish.
And furthermore, his competition, other than a 25 year old Shore in 27-28, was very weak.
Eddie Shore was competing for Hart's as early as 1927-28, when he finished 3rd. He then finished 3rd again the following year, 2 votes behind 2nd. He finishes 2nd behind Morenz in 31, 15 votes shy and then started rolling in the Hart's in 1932-33.
Shore's Hart voting record:
1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 3, 3, 5
Morenz's Hart voting record:
1, 1, 1, 2, 6, 7
Not only does Shore best him at the top end, he has greater depth as well.
Eddie Shore was an 8 time AS, and that's cutting off his 28 and 29 seasons (AS's didn't exist) where he was the highest ranking D to finish in the Hart vote both years, so you can almost surely add 2 more nods there.
So yeah, in 1950, one poll paints Morenz out to be a mythological beast of a hockey player, but how badly did he break away from the other players during the mid 20's through mid 30's,
when he didn't have the best peak or longevity Hart vote, won exactly 2 scoring titles, 1 goal title, and frankly was at best, average in the postseason, at least on an all time level (unless a person finds Cup counting a reasonable way to give credit to a player for postseason success).